Angels and Orphans
by Cobray
Summary: COMPLETE  One phrase sends them off to seek the families that had abandoned them. As the past claws out of its grave to haunt the world, battle-lines are drawn in strange places and everyone will find their faith tested.
1. The Witch of Always

_Time is a river. That's how my father explained it to me, in a place and time so distant from my present I must keep the memories outside of me in stone tablets and written words to preserve them. But if time is a river it's not the straight-and-narrow gently-flowing stream that hopeless romantics and naïve poets imagine it to be, it's a nightmare of twisting white-water rapids and harsh undercurrents, tides that will pick you up and carry you away to drown inside hidden caves and unending labyrinths of water-carved rock._

_But like time every river ends. No matter how deadly and uncontrollable the flow is eventually it will reach its end and no matter how furious the river may have been it will flow out into the gentle nothing of the ocean and no sign of its fury will remain._

_I can certainly appreciate the metaphor._

_I throw a stone out across the calm sea and we watch it bounce together. I risk a glance sideways and the eyes that look back at me contain nothing. Eyes that for endless decades now have looked into mine with no friendship or emotion or recognition. I've screamed and cried and beat against that cold wall of nothing and never has she elected a response except to hold my arms away lest I hurt myself in my attacks. The traces of her self have been erased by time, the slate slowly worn clean until all that remains is a single word, its synonyms written in bold block capitals across her soul: PROTECT. DEFEND. GUARD. An unbroken litany that will not share its home with something so irrelevant as a person._

_I can look up into the sky and see the whorls and rainbow colours of the air, patterns that push me and my world away from the surface, other memories and experiences and souls above me that keep me away and hidden from being seen or heard. The castle looms behind me, squat and dark against the lights of the sky. I can feel its pressure on the back of my neck. Even though the castle is mine, no corner of it unknown to me , no creature within that would not slit its own throat were I to command it and free to leave at any time with no bars or gates to stop me, it feels like a cage. I am a prisoner of nothing. I've sat here before, on the sands, staring out and thinking that today will finally be the day when I won't go back. I won't go back up the chains that are coarse and icy against my feet. I'll stand and walk away from the castle and never return, to see what lies beyond my little world. To reach out and touch the sky if I can, climb up through the world and scream my presence to whatever thankless God I find there._

_The lies we tell ourselves. _

_I stand up to begin the return journey across the massive chains that anchor my home to the earth. My feet leave twin ripples where they had been dangling in the water, and I watch for a moment as they spread across the surface of the sea. The wind picks up and a shiver crawls up from my legs across my chest, but instead of pulling the red furred cloak tighter around me I throw it off and stretch to let the cold air caress my body, naked underneath and still young and fresh as the day this sentence was forced upon me. I feel neither shame nor worry, there is no-one left in the world to gawk except my blank companion-servant. Her stare contains nothing lecherous, her ability to feel such basic things long since gone. Once it had not been the case and we had found some solace in each other; I seeking a replacement for my love and she something to take her mind away from her steady winnowing of her mind. Eventually that too was taken away from her by the weight of time and now I find no pleasure in grinding myself against an emotionless doll._

_I look back at the surface of the sea, unaffected by the breeze, the ripples left in my wake long since dissipated into nothingness like everything else in this empty world. No matter how big an impact is made eventually it settles back into its default state of nothing. Once I tried to make that impact, to shake the world free of the unchanging state it had fallen into, but no matter how I raged I couldn't move it from the valley it had rolled into. In the end I wasn't strong enough, all my struggles and sacrifices for naught. All that remains for me now is an eternity of nothing, sat here in my stone prison, a dim rainbow of light beating down on the world I inhabit and in those lights the movement of other worlds.  
><em>

_Even the smallest stone, hurled with enough force, will make ripples that spread across the entire ocean._

_But maybe it was never my stone to throw. Now all I can do is watch from below as others make their attempts, and wait for the day when maybe someone else will make the journey down to my prison and ask me what I know. How to throw the stone correctly, and end this ludicrous existence.  
><em>

_Do you remember?_


	2. Desert Storms

The endless desert drew his eyes to the horizon. A sharp line that cut the sand from the sky, like a black mark drawn in a child's crude painting. After days and days of travel, via air-car, boat and finally his own two feet, anything that could distract him from the flat yellowish-grey of the Centran desert was welcome.

_Talk about lowered priorities._

The buggy bumped upward over a hillock and Zell cursed as his head hit the metal frame above for what must be the hundredth time since he had boarded the errant run-down vessel. The men who piloted it didn't even look around as he did so, one with his eyes glued to some invisible path only he could see and the other sound asleep. At least to casual eyes, but Zell could see the man's right hand had never moved more than a few inches away from the massive cannon strapped to his thigh. He'd long since stopped asking people about their particular foibles, as tempers got shorter and arguments easier to find as he went south-west away from Esthar and across the Centran wastelands.

He leaned forward to the driver and risked a question, pulling the brown faded cloak across his face as he did so. "How much longer?"

The gesture the man retuned could have been a shrug or just the movement of his shoulders as the buggy navigated the rough terrain. "Half-hour, maybe more, maybe less." Eyes glanced before darting back to the road. "We'll get there, don't you worry." The man licked his lips and Zell swore he could hear the rasp. "Eager to see the man huh?"

Zell leaned back into the buggy's rear, a minor respite from the swirling dust around them. "Eager to start the path," he replied carefully, watching for the reply.

The grin spread across the nameless driver's face like an outbreak of something contagious, starting at his crazy eyes and only reluctantly reaching his mouth as he started mumbling something incoherent. Zell had become used to it at this point. The trial had started in the city as a rumour and _do-you-think what-if_ dinner topic, but as it travelled out of the city, into the Esthar salt plains and finally across the Dead Sea into Centra it had picked up the wild incomprehensible tones of prophecy and cult.

_In the dead lands there is a sound. _

_A sound to bring salvation._

_A sound to bring the new world._

He had heard it all, sitting across from ragged men and women with cracked voices and dirt-encrusted clothes as he paid for their drinks and listened to their stories. He had changed his Esthar-made jacket and clothes before he had even left the city, trading down as he travelled until eventually he was indistinguishable from the confused zealots and lost-looking wanders that he followed and purused, Xu's words in his ears as he went.

_You must becoming your target, if not your inner self then at least your outer. And for Hyne's sake Zell don't bring your damn hoverboard._

He had waved backwards as he set out with her eyes on his back, but none of her lessons had been left forgotten or unused as finally he buggy pulled to a stop at the crest of the hill and the spluttering cough of the engine vanished for what seemed like the first time in days.

The silent man climbed out first and motioned for Zell to follow without turning. The driver didn't move from the seat even as he hauled himself from the back of the makeshift vehicle and around the side to see… "Wow…" he said in awe.

_What a junkheap_, he thought to himself in considerably less awe.

Tents sprawled on the plain below, lines and lines of dull grey and brown cloth sewed together with spit and formed into rough lines. Zell could see people dodging and weaving as they came and went between them, ducking into and out of tents as they stooped to keep the dust from their faces. Some excuse for economy thrived below as he could see cloth-wrapped goods being traded with loud gestures. The entire thing reminded him of Stealth and Procurement Syllabus One, where the Garden faculty had turned one of the outdoor quads into a makeshift open market, invited the local Balamb business leaders to set up shop, and challenged the student body to steal as much as they could without being caught.

The swarm of people travelled inwards deeper into the tent city, where Zell could see some kind of rough open square that was free of tents. He resisted the urge to ask his travelling 'companions' what was there, and instead merely followed them down to the outlying tents.

_I hear a sound…_

It took him a second to realise he hadn't thought it, and turned. The driver stood, feet rooted to the ground, staring at the ramshackle cloth city with mad eyes.

"What do you hear buddy?" Zell asked quietly, but as he reached out with a hand to rest it on the man's shoulder he began to lurch downhill, throwing sand and dust into the air as he ran towards the city, now almost entirely empty as the people in it began to congregate in the central square.

_I hear a sound…_

With a mental shrug he took off and followed.

* * *

><p>He could hear sounds coming from the bar. Or at least the tent that was currently masquerading as one. With deference to custom someone had put up a small wooden sign and painted a crude beer-an on it and a price, and people had gravitated towards it. He pushed aside the tentflap and the scene that greeted him could have been found in any city or town of the world, with the exception that instead of overalls or military stripes the only uniform was the dull look of dust-infested cloth.<p>

He motioned for a beer and lightly touched the hand of the barmaid as she handed it to him. "Hey, listen, I just got here." He spoke hesitantly and tried to get across the look of the wide-eyed neophyte. "I'm…ummm…"

The woman took pity on him and gave a small smile as she looked him over, whether due to his clothes being cleaner than everyone around him or just due to being easily the youngest person in the camp. "Service just ended, you'll have to wait for tomorrow for the next one."

Zell pushed himself forward slightly and looked into her eyes. "I was told to look for someone when I came here." He dredged the name up from the briefing. "Morden. Someone told me he's the man to speak to about…er…recruitment?"

The woman's eyes slid off his to the side and he followed them to a group of rough-looking men including, he noticed, the silent gunslinger who had came to the city on the same buggy as he had. "That's the guy you want to speak to." She whistled sharply at the huddled group of men and one looked at her, then at him. Silently he stood and walked over.

"What." His voice left a strange feeling in the air, as if even though he had asked the question he didn't expect the answer.

The barmaid jerked her head at Zell and spoke as if he wasn't there. "Man wants to see Morden."

The only change in the man's demeanour was a slight widening of the eyes and a curled sneer, and for a moment Zell worried his put-upon-downtrodden-youth look had been carried off too well. "We're not looking for riff-raff, kiddo. You think you have what it takes?" He nodded. "Where'd you come down from, boy." The same non-question voice.

"Esthar," Zell answered quickly. He'd asked and Xu had agreed there was no point in disguising his point of origin. Compared to the people around him he was too obviously fresh-faced and well-fed to have come from Trabia or the Centran nomads, and without the common cough or pallor that would have marked him as a long-time Galbadian.

The man's eyes narrowed as he heard the name and Zell had another clue to the identity of the ramshackle cult around him. "You came a long way."

Zell shrugged and threw out his best shot. "I heard a sound, it told me to come."

It hit. The man looked around at his comrades and without a gesture they stood and began to leave. He looked back at Zell, his hand moving out from his robe, and for a second he saw glinting steel attached to thick leather underneath the shapeless grey garment. "We're always looking for those have what it takes," he said. "Come on."

Zell noticed the barmaid's eyes following them and he flipped a coin at her as he left and smiled. "For the beer."

She didn't smile back.

* * *

><p>Zell barely paid attention as the man walked him through the camp. As they walked others came out of the shadows, gathering to the man in black like moths to a flame. Even with his pioneering training and natural talent Zell was lost within minutes, there simply wasn't anything to distinguish between one right-angled turn between two tents from another. The man ahead neither spoke nor turned back to look at him, until at last he pulled up in front of…<p>

"We're here."

It was different, bigger. Cut out of a material so blue it was almost black, and on the front flaps painted with a symbol that made Zell sick to look at, one he recognised from the legions of papers he and Xu had sorted through before his departure. A circle painted in red, and inside a mad and seemingly chaotic placement of eyes and wings scrawled in something red he knew wasn't paint. He'd seen a dozen similar splashed onto walls in the city, and always some poor bastard laid underneath them.

He took a deep breath as the man held a tent-flap up. "Inside." Zell made sure his poker-face was perfect, and stepped past the staring black man into the darkness.

"What now?" He asked, making sure there was a slight tremor in his voice, as the flap descended. He could feel the man move past him in the darkness, and breathing sounds coming from ahead of him. He felt a shiver up his spine and made sure that his cloak was loose enough to throw off if he needed to.

"Now?" a voice said in the darkness in front of him, as with a click the sole light-bulb strung from the ceiling of the tent blazed to life, shining a harsh white light down on the men arrayed in front of him, all holding something heavy and made of metal, and all staring at him with expressions of hate in their eyes. "Now we get some answers from you."

Zell held his hands up and feigned ignorance. That it also brought his hands up ready to swing out apparently slipped by most of the thugs in front of him, and he breathed a sigh of relief. _Not professionals then._ "Listen guys I'm just-"

"Zell Dincht," the heavyset bruiser in front said. "SeeD." Zell tensed as the man reached behind his back and came out with something shiny, which he threw onto the floor. His eyes followed it down but he already knew what it was. And who it had belonged to. The SeeD medallion glinted a glossy black and white in the harsh light of the camp. "Last SeeD came round here wasn't very good at bein' a sneaky bastard either. Now-"

He ignored what Xu had told him about staying undercover, what Quistis had taught him about control and not making the first move. He struck out in anger, at the man who had thrown down the bloody badge, it saved his life. The metal pipe whirred above his head so close he felt it brush through his hair as he tensed and leapt forward, slamming his knee into the man unlucky and stupid enough to be standing just a little too close, and heard bone crack as he did so. The man fell back screaming, dropping the wrench in his hand, and Zell's boot caught it and sent it flipping away into the darkness out of reach when as one person the cultists roared and charged him. He danced backward and spun, letting his momentum carry his feet around and up into the side of another man's head as he struck out with his fist in an almost ballet-like pose that sent them both down and bleeding. Silver flashed in his vision and he moved aside as a crude knife tried to gut him in an amateur's clumsy swing, but by this time Zell was already far away and back at the entrance to the tent, already out of the awkward and failed trap.

He turned and ran outside, ducking low in case some smarter comrade was waiting outside with a bat, but all that met him was the harsh desert air and uniform rows of tents. And the man.

He put his fists up in a boxer's guard but the man in black just shook his and moved away, touching a hand to his forehead as he did so.

"Not today Dincht."

Zell paused for a second, confused as the man walked off into the maze, but quickly regained his senses as the commotion behind him in the tent signalled the recovery of his would-be killers. he shrugged mentally – _it's desert any which way, just head out – _and started running. Voices and commotion passed by him as whatever form of ratline in the camp spread the word outwards from the ambushers.

_SeeD!_

The word flew like a burning arrow through the camp and he knew he had minutes to get to its edge, if that, before someone in authority heard the word and broke out whatever armament they had. Zell knew even if the cultists couldn't afford a shower once a year they would still be armed. These people always were.

"_THERE HE IS!"_

He skidded to a halt as suddenly the voice screeched out ahead of him, and the clear desert was replaced by a mad-eyed man. It took Zell a second before he recognised him as the driver of the transport that had brought him. His surprise cost him valuable seconds as tent flaps were pushed aside and suddenly Zell was surrounded by ill-kept men and women with wild eyes and metal objects clutched in their fists.

_Shit._ "I just wanted to speak to Morden."

The man spat at him as he spoke. "SeeD killers. _Murderers. Jailers._"

_That's it then. Only one group of people mad enough to call us jailers. _ He shrugged and walked forward, and either the fear of SeeD or Zell's own face was enough to make the ones in front back off, only the wild-eyed man standing his ground until Zell was almost close enough to touch him.

He could hear men approaching from behind, and he knew they wouldn't be the hesitant civilians standing around him now. The real militants. "Move."

The nameless thug spat incomprehensible words at him, and Zell could only catch a few in the man's anger. SeeD. Killer. Jailer. He rolled his eyes. "Do you really think I was dumb enough to come alone?"

That seemed to penetrate. The man's eyes widened slightly as Zell looked behind him, and he turned. As he did so Zell planted his fist firmly into his stomach, and as the man folded to the ground with a pained groan he was already running past into the night. Exulting, he turned back and shouted into the rabid crowd. "_YES!_"

* * *

><p>The tent-town lit up below him in the dark as the temperature plummeted and those living in the makeshift homes lit stoves and burners to stave off the cold winds that blew through Centra at night. Zell perched himself on the ground on the hillock, indistinguishable from the other rocks under his grey-brown cloak, and watched as lanterns were lit and swarmed together into the central square, where they gathered around a single torch, held up by someone even his eyes couldn't make out. He wished he'd been able to keep his scopes, but Xu had scoffed and taken them away.<p>

He stood and brushed dirt off himself, thinking about the long journey home, and exactly how he was going to tell Xu and she tell Laguna that his protectorate was infested with Sorceress Cultists.

* * *

><p>He stared up at the hills and watched as the rock, at this distance the same as any other, picked itself up and walked off into the distance. The red glow of the cigarette lit up in his vision like a beacon and he ground it under his foot to let his night vision come back, as behind him the angry crowd began to move away from the outskirts of the tent city and back into the centre. He followed, slipping between the oblivious cultists like a ghost as the tents suddenly stopped before him and he found himself in the centre of the camp, and stopped before the lines below him. Eyes and wings and random symbols carved onto the compacted rocks and sand that others shuffled up to, careful not to smudge the lines, stepping over and between them as in the very centre a man stood, staring up into the sky, a red circle drawn onto the sand that still smoked from where his finger had drawn it.<p>

The robed cultist looked at him with eyes that seemed to pierce him. "Well?"

He shifted his knives under his coat unconsciously, not out of any malice or alarm but because something in the leader's manner compelled you to make sure your weapons were at hand. "Your men bungled it, the brat got out before they could even ask him his name. It was Dincht, though. Not too bright but he's a dutiful boy and he'll tell his master everything. It's Xu of course, and Xu Tyynes is a relentless bitch when she's pissed. You'll need to move your camp tonight."

The cold blue eyes never left his face as the man shook his head. He looked disappointed but not urgent, like there wasn't a care in the world, never mind that the SeeD would almost certainly have a radio secreted nearby, and Esthar's aircraft were silent as a thrown dagger and faster still than that. "I would have preferred Kinneas. I suppose it would have been too much to expect Trepe or the lion himself."

The cultist leader grinned, and the man in black shivered with the look of it. It was a grin without pleasure, and only dimly connected to reality. The symbols on the floor seemed to resonate, the ground itself a giant amplifier giving off a dull roar as he raised his hands to the night sky and spoke. "We follow a path laid out in history. Let the boy talk until the sky falls. No power on earth can hold back what comes, and when the silver walls of Esthar break and the Garden's flowers lie trampled and burned the world will look to us for salvation."

The man in black who went by the name Tollak when asked could feel the presence of the other cultists at his back as he nodded, not daring to agree or disagree lest that insane grin swing around to face him and he was asked something he knew he couldn't answer.

"We will allow the angel and her false knight and their pantheon to laugh for now. Time itself winds around me and is Her gift to me, and there is nothing immune to its rot. Let them dance and stay deaf as their end approaches at my back."

The robed man who called himself Morden Aimsland smiled into the sky, and in its darkness could see the future outlined in the stars.

"For I hear a sound."


	3. Do You Remember

"Do you remember?"

They stood on the balcony above the main entrance, overlooking Balamb Garden's main entrance. Spring had brought colour back to cover up the dirty ground where the mobile mercenary academy had churned the soil into mud upon its return to the island. The concourse swarmed with returning and new students as the calendar had finally ticked over, bringing with the new year a collection of young boys and girls all hoping and praying for that one shot at becoming a SeeD. Whether out of principle to be something more than a common soldier, desire to emulate the heroes of the Second Sorceress War or thirst for knowledge found nowhere else, they had all packed their lives away and came to the small island, sandwiched between two continents like a wasp dancing between two boxers. Most would fall by the wayside but all of them had found the courage to get this far.

For this at least they deserved his respect.

Squall could see the not-so-idle glances thrown out by the prospective students as other, older men and women slid expertly among them, dodging through the mass of pressing flesh with an easy grace from years of training. The SeeD cadre caught everything as they moved through the mass of fresh meat to get to heir work, including the envious glances thrown at them, the black-and-white emblem pinned to their chest a symbol that marking them out from the Garden faculty and acting as a sharp counterpoint to the gangly ungraceful youths. Squall had (with permission of course) changed the rules years back to make returning graduates come through the same entrance as the fresh intake and their presence gave an unspoken message to the recruits; _don't even think about becoming a SeeD unless you can be this good._

A sharp clap sounded through the air and as one they turned to look in its direction, to see a new face stood on the stairs above them. Almost at once silence descended as the nervous potentials saw the SeeDs stopping and paying attention to this new arrival, and they did the same as the woman began to speak. Squall turned away, he'd heard the speech before. Could have recited it from memory in fact. "Hmm?"

Rinoa _tisk_ed in annoyance and flicked a finger at this forehead. "I asked whether-"

"Whether I could remember." He grinned. "See, I'm a good listener."

Her look and sigh off exasperation told him what she thought of his listening skills. "Whether you could _remember_ – although sometimes I wonder whether you can remember past yesterday – what you were like when _you_ were a kid."

Squall looked back down at the collection of boys and girls below, knowing Rinoa would know he was merely thinking and not ignoring her. They were enraptured as the blonde woman talked at them, eyes fixing on each of them in turn, her warm voice seeming as if she were speaking to you and you alone. He'd been down there one year and he knew the effect it had. "Mostly I remember not talking much."

Rinoa knew he meant the orphanage. They'd talked about it at length. "And before that?"

He shrugged. "Nothing, of course."

"Parents?"

He turned and looked at her. She was staring down at the others but he knew her mind was attuned to his. "Rin, you know I can't remember any of that."

Rinoa licked her lips and took a sharp breath as if she wanted to say more, but kept silent, and Squall didn't ask why she wanted to know. He knew why. The television had talked about little else for the last week, and after a while Rinoa had simply stopped watching, and turned them off whenever she was in the same room as one. This had brought nervous glances when the TV was several meters away when she did so and more than once Zell or Selphie had had to take a nervous student aside and explain some things. They tried to avoid talking about the trial, as a courtesy.

"How's Caraway holding up?"

Her eyes fixated on the speech below as she answered. "I don't know." He heard a dull squeak as her hands tightened on the metal rail. "I don't care." She moved closer to him and he put his arms around her. "Let's not talk about that now."

He smiled and whispered into her ear. "What _are_ we going to talk about then?"

She smiled. "How many of those nubile young things you're going to have to beat off with a stick."

"I don't have a stick," he whispered back. "I have a sword though."

"Hmmm, too permanent. The headmistress would complain." Rinoa squirmed against him and he could feel her smiling. "I'm noticing a certain new deference towards her in fact, a distinct lack of standoffish silence between the two of you. Not shopping for a new model already are we?"

He could feel the ring's weight on his finger, an electric presence that still gave him a small thrill whenever he looked at it. "Xu would kill me, if a certain other woman didn't beat her to it first," he replied with a smile.

She turned and looked up into his eyes. "Oh? Have I met the lady in question?"

He laughed and danced away from a playful fist aimed at his stomach. "I was hoping you'd introduce me in fact!"

Rinoa's eyes darted sideways. "Better do it later _commander_, looks like you have a bigger problem right now."

Squall looked down from the balcony and the smile slipped from his face as he saw a pair of emerald-blue eyes staring up into his, looking non-too happy, as the combined stare of a couple of hundred recruits looked up at him. A thought suddenly came into his head, too clear and coherent to be his own, and he could feel Rinoa smiling at him evilly as he raised a hand and waved.

* * *

><p>"I don't <em>believe<em> you did that."

"I'm really sorry."

They stood on the deserted concourse, the dull murmur in the background like an idling engine that was in fact made up of the hundreds of whispers, shouts, conversations and sounds of the academy at work. Swept free of students it seemed incredibly peaceful to Squall, and if he closed his eyes he could see the picture in his head of his own arrival at Garden. Or at least he imagined he could. After a certain time he no longer knew whether the lack of recollection was due to the GF amnesia or his own lack of long-term memory. For a moment his thoughts turned back to the words Rinoa had spoken up on the balcony. _My parents..._

He was jerked out of his reverie only when movement across his vision brought him back to earth to see Quistis waving her hand across his face. She looked at him with a sister's concern. "Squall, are you alright?

He waved her hand away as she took a step back. "Sorry, some things on my mind."

"Evidently," the blonde woman replied with a wry grin. "Penny for your thoughts."

_Hyne's sake why does everyone seem to want my thoughts lately._ "You're staying long?"

Quistis' look told him _no way_, but she let him of the hook anyway. "I only came back for the inauguration, then its back to Galbadia for the reconstruction." Her eyes flitted to look at Rinoa and when next she spoke her voice was softer. "Rin, is there any message you'd like me to pass on for…"

Rinoa's reply had all the finality of a guillotine. Squall mentally kicked himself for the comparison. "No."

Quistis and Squall shared a quick look before the older woman shrugged. "Alright, have it your way." She turned from the raven-haired woman to Squall. "Don't blow the place up or anything while we're away, alright?"

Squall felt a momentary pang in his chest. Whether it was from a friend leaving for a long time or the loss of two of Garden's finest personnel he could have picked either one. "Coming to dinner tonigt? We'll all be there."

She raised an eyebrow. "Even Zell?"

"_Almost_ everyone," Squall corrected himself as the three laughed. The wandering path of their absent friend across the world was already the butt of as many jokes as there were stories. Zell had shanghaied out of Balamb as fast as he could say goodbye and pack a change of clothes, their travels seeming to have awoken a wanderlust in the young man none of them had suspected.

"Speaking of whom…" Quistis began with a wry smile, and just like that Rinoa knew this was going to be a work day.

Squall groaned. "What's he done now?"

"Why, nothing. He's been a model citizen."

The three looked around as the woman walked up to them. Rinoa and Squall nodded politely, something in Xu's manner always seeming to bring out a slight guilty feeling in them, as if they had been caught by a stern teacher doing something they shouldn't. Xu approached the two, only stopping to give a small peck on the cheek to Quistis, who smiled radiantly. "Laguna requested a warm body to do some work on all the mess left in Esthar after we…well…_left_ after the Second War ended, and Zell volunteered."

"He did huh?"

In Xu's smile there was not a hint of malice or mischievousness. "I volunteered him." She shrugged. "Hey, it got him out from under my feet."

Squall sighed and went back to the aftermath of the Second War. Galbadian invaders disgorged from the now-destroyed Lunatic Pandora had swarmed over and into Esthar. Laguna had promised rapprochement and amnesty in the cease-fire but at last count Esthar and the surrounding plains still swarmed with Galbadian troops. Some just too afraid to come out, deeply in culture shock from being thrown out of Galbadia's agricultural-cum-dirty-industrial life into Esthar's technological wonderland. Others had darker intents, and for the first time Esthar's police had come up against trained soldiers working as criminals. Not to say that Laguna didn't have his own demons to haunt him; renegades and mad Sorceress-worshippers from Adel's reign, hiding out in the aftermath of the _First_ Sorceress War and keeping their guns clean for a chance to take back their nation.

Rinoa shook her head, thoughts obviously on the same track. "Who's he been after? Anything we should worry about?"

Xu gave the younger woman a penetrating look. Only a year or two older (he had never dared ask for exact age) but she had the poise and manner of someone with a decade of experience over her peers. "_We_ are dealing with everything just fine, cadet. _You_ should be concerning yourself with your own studies. You've been falling behind on your classes recently, especially para-magic. I know you have…other abilities…but you still need to learn this."

Quistis coughed politely. "I've said I could tutor her, but-"

Squall suppressed a smile as Xu cut her off at the knees, although the rebuke was distinctly less harsh. "_You_ are no better." She blinked and the smile softened from mocking to something else. She looked over at Squall and Rinoa. "Commander, if you'll excuse us."

Quistis turned to Rinoa. "Don't worry so much, okay." The two shared a moment before the blonde turned away, and Squall and Rinoa watched as the two walked off.

"They look good together."

"You shouldn't try that Rin," Squall said.

She didn't look at him, kept her gaze fixed in the distance. "Try what?"

"You're terrible at trying to change the subject. I know it bothers you." A pause, and he said a small prayer before saying; "You should go and see him."

"I don't want to talk about it," Rinoa said, and the anger in her voice was there instantly.

"I just…"

She spun on her heel without a word and Squall caught the confused glances of passersby as he followed her as she walked away. When they were both safely out of the concourse and in the enclosed corridors of the housing blocks he tried again.

He tried a different tack. "Quistis talks with him, she has to because of the job. She says he's changed a lot. You know he never hated-"

When she looked back at him, out of the open space of the garden and in the privacy of the apartment they shared, the hostility had gone from her manners into her voice. "I don't want to know Squall. I don't want to know _him._ You know he never even said sorry, or even tried to make up for all the years of pain and fear. He just tried to quit and step down and thought that would be enough. It isn't."

The memories welled up like oil from a split rock, hard and black in her voice when she talked about him. Rinoa's relationship with her father was one of the few Squall had never dared touch. But some part of him… "It's not good for you Rin."

"You don't know Squall, what it's like growing up with a man like that…"

"At least you grew up with one at all." The words were out of his mouth before he could hold them back, and for a second as Rinoa jerked back at the words he tasted bile on his tongue. "I'm sorry Rin, I just…"

She wiped a hand down her face and when she did so the anger leeched out of her, and he could see how tired she looked. "I'm sorry Squall. It's just a hard topic for me."

He was surprised how hard it was to keep speaking, even though the first words had come out so easily it was now as if they were trying to claw their way back into his heart and fall asleep there again. "Didn't you have _any_ good times with him?"

Rinoa stared out of the window across the ocean before she answered. "Some, when I was a kid." _Half-remembered Christmases, staring out of the frosted windows as behind me my father and mother sat watching me from the chairs in the mansion. A smile on his face that he never showed his daughter, a smile he left in his wife's coffin when they lowered her into the ground._ "Only some."

He held her close and whispered into her ear. "Rin, if I had a choice between nothing and something, no matter how little it was, I would pick the something."

She looked up into his eyes and she could see how much he cared. "It's really gotten to you hasn't it?"

He nodded and shrugged, not an easy gesture with his arms wrapped around her. "A little bit." _Years of cold stone walls at the orphanage and a shell of ice to keep others out. _Not that he hadn't loved Cid and Edea Kramer, but they hadn't been his parents and he had always known it. "Yeah, if it was between the orphanage and Caraway, I'd have picked Caraway, if I had a choice."

"You can still have him you know, I'd trade him for some flowers and maybe a decent cooked meal" Rinoa said, but it was with humour now and not malice. The smile changed to something more whimsical for a second. "They must be out there somewhere you know. Did you never want to look?"

He disengaged carefully and went to the windows, looking out over the green fields of Balamb, you could always see the ocean no matter where you were. Some found it a barrier to the outside, Irvine had once compared it to a prison, but Squall had always found it to be a comfort. A fortress. He wondered now whether the laconic gunman had been right. "I wondered sometimes, but it was never a priority."

"Make you a deal."

Squall turned around and he could see the mischievous smile, the light from the windows streaming past him to make her eyes sparkle. "Oh?"

Rinoa took a deep breath. "I'll go."

He blinked. "Wait, what-"

She rushed past his confusion. "I'll go to Galbadia, I'll talk to my father."

He smiled. "That's great, I'll-"

"_If._"

_Oh, of course._ "If?"

"If you do the same."

"If I do the same?"

"Find your parents. When you do I'll go and see him…see Caraway." She smiled. "Quid pro quo Squall."

He sighed and collapsed into the sofa, not even bothering to argue the point, defeated. "Deal."

She collapsed next to him and put her head against his lap, staring up at him. "Really?"

"You know I can't say no to you Rin."

"Then help me with this coursework."

"No."

"You!" Rinoa beat hands against him playfully and they laughed together as they fell back across the sofa, all cares removed by the simple fact of being together.

* * *

><p>Laying in bed at night, the starlight from the open curtains (Rinoa insisted on it) spilling into the room and giving an unearthly glow to the room they shared. Cid had bequeathed it to the commander's rank as hi last act and he had had a twinkle in his eye that had made Rinoa blush and Squall roll his eyes as he left, the apartment on the upper-levels of the Garden, above the hustle and well-trafficked corridors of the standard housing areas below. From here you could look out of the windows and see the curve of the world.<p>

He remembered fields of wheat, and stone halls, and a tall man whose smile was wiped away as his memories became jumbled and chaotic, and as much as he had tried he could never take that mess of childhood and re-arrange it into something comprehensible.

_My parents, huh?_

It bothered him, he didn't deny it. A yearning he'd suppressed all those decades ago in the orphanage with the others, when Ellone had left and he'd locked himself away, surrounded by friends and yet alone. He had never wondered (_or maybe you hadn't allowed yourself to wonder Squall, did that ever occur to you?)_ about his parents, never needing them when he had been inward and pushing away human emotion, and then Cid and Edea had been enough in the years after when he had opened up (_when Rinoa opened me up)_.

He held a hand up out of the bed, careful not to disturb the sleeping form of his wife, and watched as the starlight glinted off it, throwing shadows onto his palm and a golden reflection from the ring on his finger that was still new enough to make him smile at its presence. Visions of the future danced in his head. A life, a job he enjoy, a woman he loved and the promise of more to come. But attached to that a chain of the past, and he couldn't see what was sat the end of that chain. Was it a simple broken link, nothing more than lost memories, or was there something deadly, hidden and catching up with his present even as he lay there in contentment.

_Do you remember?_

_No._

_But I will._


	4. White Noire

The man stared nervously at the two figures as they leaned precariously over the railing to stare down at the sea, the water rushing in and out of the docks and splashing their faces. The sea air felt coarse over his skin and he pulled his jacket tighter across his body to keep it out. The two watchers seemed impervious to the cold as they looked down at the body that floated on the waves below. As they watched the surf turned the body over in the water to reveal his shattered face, and the man made a look of pained disgust as the woman turned to walk over to him with no visible reaction. _Must have ice-water in her veins._

In contrast to her lack of empathy her voice was soft, so soft he had trouble hearing it over the coastal winds. "Well?"

The man fumbled for a reply for a moment as the woman's good eye stared into his. "He turned up a few hours ago in the bay." His ears still rang from the shouts of the hysterical man that had spotted the body. He took a deep breath and watched for any change in the woman's expression as he went on. "He's had his throat slit and his face sliced apart to the bone. He's been floating for a couple of days." And he didn't bother going on from there. They were lucky the winter waters had preserved the body. If it had been a hot Galbadian summer they could have brought the man up in buckets.

Her face changed not one iota. "Why us?"

He reached into his pocket and tossed the item out. She caught it out of the air without her eye ever leaving his face. He was spared any explanation when the woman's companion walked up and peered over her shoulder. "That's a SeeD emblem, yo."

Her expression twitched and the luckless militiaman could almost read her thoughts. _A dead SeeD washed up in a Galbadian coastal dock? In the middle of the reconstruction? There's going to be hell to pay for this._

Fujin stared down at the emblem, thumb brushing over it. Even with days of saltwater grinding away at the shine the pointed white-and-black yin-yang symbol was still recognisable, a match to the ones they wore, with one exception; the cross-shaped extensions coming off from the symbol were not the red that she and Raijin wore. "Yellow…"

The man shrugged and wished again that he hadn't been walking past the phone as it rang. SeeD and Garden made him nervous. Even after the war had ended and they had moved into the continent to start rebuilding he'd managed to avoid dealing with them by staying out of Deling. Anything that happened on this broken angry mess of a continent happened in the city, and he had been looking forward to a peaceful retirement. Let this cup pass from him. "We don't have much in the way of policing out here ma'am. Deling would know better about all of this," he said, not a little emphasis on _Deling._

"He's right Fu. Take it to the big man, he'll know what to do."

She looked from her companion back to him, and for a second he was put in the mind of some hungry predator, sizing him up for cuts, and he shivered. Finally she turned away. "You're right."

He watched the two climb into their car and leave. He had the feeling that he had barely escaped with his life.

* * *

><p>"Didn't tell him this ain't the first one, huh?" Raijin said as they left, looking in the rear mirror to see the militiaman standing dumbly watching them leave.<p>

Fujin resisted the urge to tell him to keep his eyes on the road. "That wasn't necessary." She leaned back in her seat and closed her eye, taking stock as the darkness replaced her vision. "Third one this month. All coastal towns. All killed the same way." She tried to picture a weapon that could do what she had seen. A threshing machine would easily cut that deeply and so many times, but she didn't seriously think there was a murderer travelling the countryside with portable farm machinery.

"The badge too," Raijin said. "Wasn't a SeeD from G-Garden."

Fujin nodded. "Trabian." She had known Raijin far longer than anyone else, even Seifer. He was impulsive and rude and sometimes not a little clueless, but he wasn't stupid. Stupid people didn't become SeeDs. She ran a list in her head of all the SeeDs she knew deployed in Galbadia but no Trabian name jumped out at her. A simple slip-up? More and more it seemed to be happening as personnel and goods ran in and out of Galbadia, and all of them came through the Rebuilding Committee's doors, which meant that all of them eventually came through her fingers. Those fingers had, she was loathe to admit, been a little shaky lately. None of them had been getting much sleep recently. Loire's men helped but she didn't dare use more of them, the presence of foreign soldiers – Esthar ones at that – in the Galbadian capital already a sore spot that chafed on the Galbadian civilians and military like an itch they didn't dare scratch, lest it turn into something more serious.

_Two oceans, half a world away from your snow and ice. What are your men doing in Galbadia, Tilmitt?_

She stared out of the vehicle as Deling City came into view. The sun was already going down and she could see dirty red lights coming on as gas-powered lamps were lit and generators joined up. The city seemed to squat on the plain, tendrils and roads moving out of it to link up the outlying villages of the Galbadian republic. The smell seemed to reach out from the place and into the buggy, and she rolled up the window even though she knew it was an illusion. She wished she was back in Balamb with the clean air and sea breeze. Some days it felt like she was surrounded by smog and exhaust.

* * *

><p>"Any luck?"<p>

Raijin shucked off his coat and collapsed into the chair, which groaned audibly. The old oaken furniture was older than both of them put together and she winced. At least the old owner wasn't around to care. "Luck isn't what you call this stuff, y'now?"

The hum of voices and dry rush of shuffling paper sounded through the mansion, the horns and motors of passing cars as they came and went by the old manor. When they had first arrived, trucks full of concrete and steel at their backs, Fujin had taken one look at Caraway's mansion; hilltop position and spacious rooms, and immediately fallen in love. They'd been set up and operational before the week was out. Its previous owner being indisposed had also helped. She handed the picture of the dead SeeD to the unnamed scribe sitting there, and he made a pained face and handed it on. Eventually it reached the other end of the table, and the man sitting there quietly and patiently.

Seifer Almasy picked it up and gave a slight sneer before throwing it back into the smooth polished oak. "Shit."

"Trouble," Raijin agreed, nodding. Even though officially and on paper he outranked the man nothing would ever be able to get the natural subservience out of his system. Having no such crutch herself this suited Fujin fine.

"Someone's killing SeeDs," she said. "Why." She sat and listened as the staff of the committee threw out suggestions, ranging from a crazed killer – something she found totally unoriginal and unlikely – to monsters loose in the sewers.

One of them had a simpler explanation. "Why not?" Seifer shrugged and waved a hand expansive, taking in the view from the window that stared down onto the rest of the city. At night by the view of the gas-lamps it could be hard to see past the fog, but his point was made. "Lot of people out there still hate SeeDs." She could tell from his voice that he didn't find that so objectionable. "It's a hostile city Fu, you know it." They all did. The sidelong glances and hostile looks non-Galbadians got in the city were usual but still disheartening. Even more so to belong to the hated organisation that had taken so many Galbadian soldier's lives. Never mind that those lives had been attempting to conquer the globe.

"Unacceptable," she replied quickly, and took a deep breath. "We have been here-" she checked her watch for some reason she wasn't quite sure of, "five months. It took three _years_ to get the Galbadian provisional government-"

"Their _excuse_ for a government, bunch of generals and merchants only alive because they too busy hiding to fight in the damn war-" Seifer muttered. His opinion on the politicians and 'rulers' that had crawled out of the woodwork after the Second Sorceress War had ended was well known by now. _At least Caraway had the balls to throw his hat into the ring. The rest just sat and watched. Plenty of credit to go around if he succeeded and well, if he didn't they could always say he had been acting alone. Cowards._

She raised a hand to forestall him. "Enough." _Let's not forget your own position here Seifer._ "Three years to get their permission to help with the reconstruction. Two more to even begin work when they realised it would mean bringing Esthar to help rebuild their own city." _That_ argument had been legendary.

Seifer snorted. "They should be grateful SeeD came in at it. They should have let Dollet finish the damned job to take the place apart brick by brick." Seifer hadn't been in the team that had held off the furious and opportunistic Dollet military in the aftermath, but he knew how close they had come. After time-compression had ended chaos had reigned _just_ long enough for the coastal city-state to begin a vengeance-fuelled attack, and Leonhart had only stopped it by placing B-Garden physically between the city and the invading army and calling in all the favours he had. The duchess had been furious, but she had relented. Relations between SeeD and Dollet were not cordial.

Fujin sighed. _Hyne give me strength._ She could feel the strain on her voice as she spoke. Long speeches would never be her thing, for more reasons than her old injury. "Heartilly will be coming here in a matter of days for the Timber Summit. The commander will no doubt follow. Even if they don't stay long they _will_ be coming by Deling." She ignored the reaction in Seifer and went on. "Trepe and Tyynes will be coming back to oversee T-Garden's reopening and the reconstruction, and we _will_ have to answer to them." She slammed a hand down on the oak table, which juddered, pictures sliding across the smooth surface. "We need this SeeD-killer found, and found _soon_."

One of them men she hadn't bothered to remember the name of spoke in. "What if it isn't just one crazed lunatic? We're pulling bodies out of the water, that's dozens of miles from the city. You're not talking about a dark ally, a sharp knife and a quick drop into the sewers ma'am. Someone had to carry this thing out of the city."

Fujin shrugged. "Someone out there has to know something. We'll find out." She pointed fingers. "_You_, check around the bars, especially the old soldier hangouts. _You_, the militia, any records of anyone with obvious violent tendencies." She went on. Records of people who had lost friends or family in the Second War, another looking at veterans of the First War with Esthar. The room steadily emptied until only three remained.

"Really going to try and pull this one off huh?" Seifer said.

Fujin nodded and said something she wouldn't have if anyone else had been present. "We owe them." Raijin shifted in his seat and opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it. "_We owe them._" She looked across at Seifer but said nothing. He could pick it up fine. _You especially._

He shrugged and stood. "As you will." He smirked at the change of fortunes and she couldn't help but give a small grin back. "Look after yourself Fu."

"You too Seifer." She checked her watch. "I need some air."

And smog-filled smoke was better than none.

* * *

><p>She walked the streets of the city. Dressed in a simple shirt and jacket she could almost imagine herself as a normal person. At least until she approached other civilians. Widened eyes as they walked quickly by her, or a reflection in a mirror, brought her back to reality with a crash. The SeeD emblem that flashed on her jacket marked her out as something alien in the paranoid city. After the war had ended she had considered it; throw off her old uniform, dye her hair, maybe make a chance at a real life somewhere far away where nobody knew her name or her past. But every time the idea emerged she had looked back at herself and thrown the idea aside. In the years since the Second War ended she had been corralled and gently pushed into the group of projects and discussions (<em>admit it; arguments)<em> that SeeD liked to collectively call the 'Peace Effort', and she knew that civilian life would hold no pleasures for her. When Trepe had returned to Galbadia to oversee G-Garden's repairs for its eventual re-opening they had met up and drank together, and the blonde woman's words had always stayed with her since.

_What would we do if we didn't do this?_

"It's not gonna happen y'know."

She didn't look up. "Reading my mind again?"

"It's pretty easy. You're worried about the big-shots coming over, someone trying to take a potshot at Leonhart and his little lady?" Even though he was one of two people – maybe three – who could issue a command to any soldier in the city and have it obeyed he steadfastly refused to refer to himself as one of those big-shots. There was something just plain down-to-earth about Raijin. "Hell Fu even if some nutcase did try and get at 'em how many steps do you think they'd take before they got turned into bloody mist." He shrugged. "We do good work. Dollet almost turned th'place into rubble you know, and now look at it. Almost like a real city again. We got nothing to be ashamed about now."

_Maybe not you, _she began to say, but no reply came, and she felt her companion tense beside her.

"Hmmm?" She looked up at Raijin but the big man's attention wasn't on her, and she looked around to follow his vision to see- "Shit." She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him into the shadow of the building before they could be seen.

A group of men anywhere between youths and adults were stood around a wall, backs to the street. She could hear a dull hiss coming from within the shifting gang and would have already been ignoring them, if it wasn't for almost every one of the men wearing a shirt with a red symbol spattered in paint across their back, and every one of them holding something long and metal in their free hand.

Raijin leaned down to her and whispered. "Fu, we-"

"Wait." She stated, quiet as the grave, and watched as the group worked. The shapes took form on the wall, the blue paint leaving curving awkward shapes as hands clearly unused to the task sprayed them onto the wall. As their arms moved and clothes shifted she spotted Galbadian uniforms and insignias and tattoos, and another uniform she recognised well:

"Esthar?"

She didn't realise she had spoken aloud until one of the man whipped towards her. For one moment their eyes met and suddenly Raijin was trying to drag her away as the first one whispered something unintelligible to the others, and the hiss of the spray-cans stopped as they turned away and stared at her. In their eyes she saw only suspicion and hatred and she took an involuntary step back before she remembered who she was. "STOP!"

They stepped away from the wall and before Fujin could think about the images she saw on it the first man was already leaping towards her with an inhuman bellow, and the metal pole in his hand swinging around to meet her face. She cursed as she reached for the oversized shuriken she used as her preferred weapon and remembered she had left it back at the mansion. For a second she watched the pipe sailed towards her, then suddenly it was careening off into the distance as the man attacking her found his path obstructed by Raijin's massive fist, and he fell back spraying blood from a broken nose.

_Snap out of it._ She didn't dodge the next blow, a man in a tattered Esthar uniform and a butcher's cleaver in his palm. Instead she blocked his clumsy swing, grabbing his wrist and squeezing until he dropped the blade, then simply threw him over her shoulder. She spun around to face the others as Raijin dusted off his hands, the huge man's muscles almost gleaming in the light from the streetlamps, and she could see the nervousness on the faces of the other attackers as they faced her. When she noticed they weren't looking at her face she realised why. Her SeeD emblem shined in the streetlamps like a protective shield and she took her chance. "You're under arrest. Put your weapons down and come with us."

The lone man that had hung back from the others worried her the most. Instead of anger on his face there was a cold calculating look she recognised well. She had used it often enough herself, and she kept her eye on him as Raijin faced the rest of the group. He looked like any construction worker of soldier; heavily built in plain weathered clothing. Only his eyes spoke of some higher mental reasoning than his fellow meatheads. "Make me, seed bitch."

_Shit. Now what?_ Between the two of them they could take them down, but without a weapon they probably couldn't do it uninjured. Thankfully she didn't have to find out.

"_HEY!"_

The militiamen turned the corner in the same instant as the remaining attackers started moving, and the flinch as they heard and saw the new arrivals was enough. They turned and fled as they were approached from both sides, only the calmer one locking eyes with Fujin for a second before he turned and ran. She let out a breath she didn't realise she had been holding as the militiamen approached.

They slowed as the pair came out of the light, and their SeeD badges became visible. "You okay?" Their voices are carefully neutral, not giving away anything. "We heard a gang was walking around here, guess they were right."

"Thanks." She tried a smile. "You know those people?"

He shrugged, the movement making his uniform _cling_ as metal bumped off metal. Fujin wondered whether full riot gear was usual for night watchmen. "Just some punks wandering around. Might be drunken workers, what with the reconstruction and all."

_No way._ She gestured towards the sprayed wall, all crudely-drawn wings and eyes. "Just some gang signs?"

The man nodded. "Yes'm."

_You're lying. I wish I knew why._ Fujin just nodded. "Thank you for the help," she said formally, and watched as the men walked off. Within seconds they were lost in Galbadia's night-time fog.

"You think he's lyin'?" Raijin asked.

"Know it," she whispered. She fingered the knife one of the men had dropped. She ran a finger across the blade and felt something other than cold stuff, dents and lines running through the metal. _One of them was wearing an Esthar uniform._

She spoke before she thought. "Let's go home." Except she wasn't thinking of the manor. Home to her was a white-walled room in Balamb Garden, but she had lost that room years ago when she had gone with Seifer. She thought she had put the regret behind herself but it slunk up to her sometimes when her mind wasn't paying attention: _Balamb isn't your home anymore_.

Raijin snorted. "Where's home now Fu?"

She shrugged. "Wherever we rest our head."

* * *

><p>"Sounds like the two of you had an interesting evening." Seifer raised an eyebrow as the two walked back in and Fujin threw something at him. He caught it out of the air easily, a foldable knife. Without asking – he knew she wouldn't waste his time – he unfolded it and held it up to the light. The grooves caught the light and made lines against the light. "Nice. Get you twenty for it in any pawn shop."<p>

Fujin nodded and pulled down a whiteboard, started scribbling on it. Seifer just sat in silence in the ornate room. He wore a shortened version of his old white jacket and shifted uncomfortably in the expensive leather chair of the boardroom. Like a feral tiger taken out of the wilderness and put into a pampered zoo. He didn't belong and he knew it. Did that make Fujin and Raijin his jailors? His train of thought was derailed as suddenly the shapes she was drawing joined up before him and as Fujin stepped away he saw- "You're kidding."

"What would I gain by lying to you in?"

"Oh horse_shit!"_ He kicked away from the desk and stood, walking towards the marker drawn symbols as though he could intimidate them into being something they weren't. Eyes and wings. Curves and circles. "God _damnit_."

"What now?" Raijin asked as Seifer paced in front of the board.

Fujin sighed. _More trouble. Hyne's sake, the worst kind of trouble. _She thought back to the briefing with Trepe, Heartilly and Headmaster Kramer and the old man's words still stuck with her.

_Sorceress Cultists come in three flavours, _he had begun as the gathered SeeDs stared at the papers and reports in front of them. _Survivors and exiles of the First Sorceress War. Either those who were unable to adjust to Lag- to President Loire's rule and never got over being under Adel's thumb, or the collaborators who were exiled from the city after he came to power. These are harmless remnants, those too broken to find peace in the new world and want to be commanded by someone, and bitter exiles who want to go back to glory and power and can't while Laguna is in power. They're harmless dreamers and drinkers mainly. Often at the same time._

_We know where they are already,_ Trepe had cut in. _Most of them ran to Fisherman's Horizon or Trabia and went to ground in villages there. This was before the Esthar Shield went down remember, they had nowhere else to run. Selphie's keeping an eye on them for us._

Cid had nodded and went on. _Second Sorceress War veterans are much more dangerous. These are Galbadians who fought for Edea, survivors of the Battle of the Garden who saw the fight between you and her, and random civilians who were unlucky enough to come into contact with Ultimecia's power during the Time Compression. They believe that Sorceresses are the literal angels of Hyne and avatars of His will, with Ultimecia as His archangel. They think they have a duty to cleanse the earth of unbelievers so Hyne can return. They are much more militant than the first group and all of that militancy is directed at SeeD, who they see as working to deny God's will._

_Finally there is the third breed, coming up out of Esthar._ Cid had looked at Heartilly and she in turn had gripped Leonhart's hand tighter. _These are focussed around you Rin. Your wings, the white light your Sorcery manifests as; all incredibly symbolic to anyone with an ounce of faith. Right now they're mad and scattered and nobody knows whether they want to worship you as a goddess or kill you as a traitor for stopping Ultimecia. I'm sorry I don't know more._

_All these people share a common thread; they are not rational. They are obsessed people, and obsessed people will do dangerous things._

Fujin looked over at Seifer, who nodded. She turned back to Raijin and although the room was heated and the windows closed, it felt like a chill had descended in the old mansion.

"Track them down, and wipe them out."

* * *

><p>With the three-chapter promo done the story will now update regularly on Saturdays, somewhere between 5pm-7pm GMT.<p>

It's hard to look over your own writing for mistakes when you've been staring at it as you write, so **if anyone is interested in proof-reading the story throw me a PM**. Really someone willing to point out spelling and grammar errors, and to say when something is unclear or doesn't make sense. Unfortunately I can't pay you (not even in WoW gold), so all I can offer is early access to the chapters as they're written.

Hope you've found the story interesting so far, hope you'll stick around. Comments, reviews, constructive criticism all welcome.

-Cobray


	5. The Witch of Sorrow

_I remember…_

_I remember before the end came, before I called down time onto the world and began the long cycle of rebirth that would leave me trapped inside a memory. After my companion had lost her body but not yet her soul, after the last 'humans' had finally died and left us alone and alone in this unchanging void. I think it was then that I looked away from the world and into myself, the castle transforming from being merely a place (not a home, never that) of stone and marble and metal and into an extension of my head, my powers sunk into its foundation until it had became a part of me. I live in a castle of memories, the times past written in its stones and ornaments._

_My memory of the last time we spoke, not far in the past. It lays on the surface of my mind like a barbed rose, easy to reach down and see but painful to pick up and examine. Yet I find that I must._

* * *

><p><em>We're sat somewhere I don't recall exactly, some awkward fold of metal and stone that juts out from the castle like a spike embedded in its towers. At this point I no longer care or bother to remember the topography of my own home, whatever balcony or veranda that is here will be gone in a matter of hours. Whether this is due to a self-awareness of the castle itself as it adjusts itself to my moods or a reflection of my own psyche I no longer care. If the latter is true then I wonder what the creatures roaming its halls represent.<em>

_The wind is blowing hard this far up and I have to strain to hear her. It's been weeks since we last met, the pull not yet strong enough to keep her chained to me, and sometimes we wander the halls alone simply to get out of the other's sight, lest in staying together I drive myself sick of the one thing I have left. I turn and look at her and hear_

_She smiles pathetically, whether to lessen the blow to herself that saying the words must bring or trying to cushion the blow to me. "I can't hold on anymore."_

_You have to, I reply selfishly, no longer knowing whether my pathetic begging is horror at the thought of the mind-death of my friend or the simple fact that I will be left alone._

"_For god's sake," she whispers back." I'm just so tired." She looks up into my eyes, and I see that finally the toll is too much for her, and my heart skips a beat as I realise that she will no longer 'hold on', will just let herself fall gently away. It will take no effort. The last step is the easiest._ _"It's not like there's much of me left in here anyway," she says, and I just can't, just can't find any argument to pull her back._

_She tries to talk, to explain, but I refuse to listen. As if somehow not acknowledging the sounds will make their truth go away. I mutter words and platitudes about staying together and believing but after so many years they ring hollow to the both of us, and when her eyes hold an accusing look I can't stand it and I turn away. Like a mirror-image of cancer that keeps her alive and is steadily entrenching on her mind the power has made her unrecognisable now, the image of her mother. Those eyes stare at me as if it were my fault that her very blood calls out to envelop mine and keep it safe. The eyes are all that is left and soon even these will be gone._

_I turn and leave her there on the outside, staring off into space, as I move back into the depths of the castle. With the door shut only the wind is left outside as the cold slips through the walls and follows me throughout the stone halls like a vengeful ghost, trying to ease its fingers under my cloak. The winding staircase down the clock-tower is old and falling into disrepair, as whatever unconscious wish of mine seems to wish destruction upon it gently prises it apart. I travel past gardens of petrified trees and dead gray flowers, statues that follow my path with stone eyes and whispering creatures in the dark underbrush._

_The great hall remains unchanging. Maybe something of my soul that retains some spark of optimism makes sure this is so, keeps it sane compared to the twisting nightmare of the upper levels. From here I can look out across the great chains, down to the beach and the stone house that still draws me to it endless eons after all else has faded. I think back and I can still remember faces, distorted and half-remembered but faces nonetheless. It brings a smile to my face and a cry to my heart as I realise this is all there is for me now, pathetic when a half-remembered face is the happiest moment of the year._

_I hear a noise and turn to see her standing there, and for a second my heart pounds with the hope that she has kept fighting against it, for a little while longer at least. But then I see that the light in her eyes has faded, the warmth and love and care finally gone to be replaced with a dull and dead thing, and there is nothing left as I scream and cry and pound my fists against her chest. She stares down at me with no reaction and I collapse to the ground and weep at the feet of the emotionless soulless doll that has replaced my dearest friend._

* * *

><p><em>That was the last memory worth keeping, my last memory where something <em>happened_. No matter that it was so painful, at least it was _something_. Everything since has been nothing. The light faded for the last time and I lost my only living companion, my fate to be alone forever sealed up and presented to me as some horrible prize. The world vacated of everything and myself its heir._

_The stone I threw missed and sank without trace and my punishment is to live in this prison, with only endless silence and the rustling of the wind and the castle at my back. It was then that I began the process that would call down my fate and bring the present to the future, to begin the cycle anew and hope that the next would prove different enough to break free. I look up into the sky and I can see my folly written there in the lives that came after. None of them able to throw the stone hard enough or far enough._

_I move across the beach towards the flower-fields, a silent presence at my side telling me she is still watching and protecting. Protecting against what neither of us know, as nothing else lives in this compressed memory-world. My cloak brushes against the cold stones, making a whispering noise drowned out by the wind's passage through the dusty home. The door to the fields is a white hole cut in the side of the slabs and I move through it, the flowers instantly pushing against my feet. They have run wild since I ceased to care for their intake, blessedly unaware and seemingly impervious to the unreal world around it. They have thrived in their own unreality, but I take no joy in them._

_I run my hand through the fields and the wind picks up at my whim, sending the flowers whirling into the air. Each one that flies past my face brings back fragments of the past, my memory writ in their petals. Happier times than this. I can hear whispers on the horizon, voices that seem familiar, but they belong to people long-dead, so I ignore them. I must look back even farther for better times, to shed light on how I became entombed here beneath the sickening rainbow sky, and whether any salvation might come._

_Do you remember?_


	6. Starry Souls

Soft music played in the room as she heard Xu approach her chair from behind, the soft thrumming sound of the Garden's engines humming from beneath the floor. Xu had asked her whether the sound had bothered her and she had just smiled softly as she replied.

_It feels like home._

The MD levels of Balamb Garden, the old faculty building and home to the monstrous Garden Master in the bad old days of the Second War. She had seized her chance after the disastrous clash with G-Garden to remodel the lower levels and shed some light on the ancient Centran machinery. Cid had allowed open-access to the core levels but had set aside the old Garden Master's quarters for a more personal remodelling, and the new headmistress had made them her own; the cavernous, almost cathedral-like black shadowy chamber turned into a quiet apartment, far below the hustle and noise of the Garden proper, soft lights illuminating the cool colours she had chosen for her own. When she closed her eyes and listened she could hear the twin hums of the Garden's engines coming from even farther below, and the almost-inaudible sound of power flowing through the GF Core, the ancient magical creatures' resting-place kept behind a locked steel vault to which very few held a passkey. She knew Xu would have preferred something a little lighter in tone, but these were _her_ rooms, and she loved them for the peace and comfort it seemed to bring to a sometimes-troubled and always-tired headmistress.

She heard the footsteps as Xu approached the soft-lit desk she sat at and the movement of air around her as she stood behind. "Hey." The tall black-haired woman planted a soft kiss on her cheek and wrapped her arms around Quistis' as she looked over her shoulder. Plans and diagrams and notes laid out in front of her covered the desk. "Still working?"

Quistis leaned back in the soft leather until she could look up into Xu's eyes. "Fujin's reports on the reconstruction. Time to head out, now that the B-Garden ceremony's over."

"You sure you're ready to leave so soon?"

She smiled at the inherent question in her subordinate's voice. "Nida will do a good job."

"I don't doubt it. I'm just a control freak." She smiled as she said it, even as they both knew it was true. To the rest of the Garden she was an iron will that students, faculty and even headmasters had beaten against like waves upon the rocks, but down in the soft darkness she could throw off her mask and let the rest of her personality out to play. Xu looked down as Quistis sat in silence, tapping a finger idly against the desk. "What's wrong?"

She looked up and couldn't stop her eyes from sliding away from Xu as she replied. "What do you mean?" She cursed herself for the white lie, knowing she'd been caught off-guard.

Xu lowered her head until her hair was almost brushing against Quistis' cheek as she stood over her. "Don't try that with me."

She sighed and pushed the chair back as she stood. "Something Rin and Squall were talking about yesterday, that's all."

She felt Xu's eyes on her as paced the room, the rooms dimming and brightening as she walked through them. It looked like she radiated light as she stepped through their chambers, and it would have brought a smile out of her worry if the expression on her lover's face hadn't been so nervous. "Oh?"

She stopped pacing and stared off into nothing, the light reflecting from her eyes. "They were talking about their parents."

Xu raised an eyebrow as she replied. "Squall's an orphan, you of all people should know that. Rinoa's father is Caraway and her mother was that singer who died years ago. What's to know?"

She spun and looked into Xu's eyes earnestly as she replied. "_Exactly_. We've all lived so long _knowing_ that we're orphans that we don't even begin to question the knowledge. We act as if orphan is just a natural state that we sprung out of and it's all perfectly fine." Quistis' voice was insistent, as if trying to convince herself of something. "First we had the GFs to make us forget who we were," her eyes flicked over to the steel door hidden in the alcoves of the rooms, "then we had all the chaos of the Second War. No time to stop or think about what was going on. Now it's the new SeeD cadets and figuring out Galbadia's reconstruction and Esthar's mess and…" she fell back theatrically onto the couch and sighed. "There's too much world out there and suddenly SeeD is wrapped up in all of it. Hyne don't ever tell Squall I said this but sometimes I wish we were like other merc outfits and just took money to shoot at people."

"Sounds like you need some downtime my girl. Get out of Garden for a few days, get a suntan maybe," Xu said pointedly. There was a fine line between hothouse elegance and unhealthy pallor and recently Quistis knew had been dancing back and forth across it.

She looked hurt "We're going somewhere esle right now."

"Travelling from _B-_Garden to _G-_Garden isn't exactly the change of scenery you need. Take a vacation. It's been five years since the Second War ended, have you taken even one day off? We're a minute's drive from the beach. Pack a bathing suit and _go._ Stay over in Dollet for a few days."

Quistis rubbed her eyes to try and wipe away some of her fatigue and stared into the ceiling. "Not before Caraway's trial," she said. It had consumed her days and nights as the date had approached and the man had to answer for his crimes. She had kept vigilant watch over half a continent as the reconstruction of Galbadia and its Garden had progressed, practically strong-arming its remaining military forces to keep half a dozen civil wars from breaking out between towns and militias when Deling's grip over them suddenly lifted. Even with all that she hadn't been able to stop Dollet's lightning-fast attack as the duchess had taken swift revenge for decades of military boot-grinding on her city-state. She envied Selphie and Irvine and their huge snowbound lands. Even if Trabia's survival template was somewhere between somewhat harsh and downright hostile to human life least they had _quiet._ "Rinoa isn't taking it well."

"I've heard on the grapevine. She's been snapping at _Squall_, even." Xu shook her head at the thought. The bond between Heartilly and Leonhart was legendary. There was no answer and she looked back at Quistis. "This is really bothering you, isn't it?"

* * *

><p><em>The stone walls are cold against her hands as she stares out at the departing vehicle. She can feel matron's presence behind her and laughter somewhere else in the sprawling orphanage complex but she doesn't turn around, waiting until the ship has left. "Why didn't they want me?" She looks around at Matron trying hold back the tears back inside herself, blue eyes staring at the woman in black who had waved as she had ridden away with her new family only months before with smiles on both their faces. <em>

_The smiles hadn't been there when she had returned. Nor had anyone else. Squall had changed from a quiet boy who played with his 'sister a lot' to a sullen child that went through the orphanage like a ghost (of his sister Ellone was nowhere to be found). Irvine, Seifer and Zell had left before she returned, and the stone halls echo with her own footsteps as a young girl struggles to wonder why, why the people who had taken her away with smiles and tears of joy in their eyes had brought her back with sidelong glances, and their smiles turned to worried looks and quickly jerked-away movements whenever she had tried to hold a hand or reach for a hug._

"_You'll always have a home here Quisty," Matron said as she hugged the small girl fiercely._

_Somehow it's not much comfort._

* * *

><p>She nodded. "It bothers me."<p>

Xu shrugged. "Then go find out."

She gawped. "How would I even start? I wouldn't know what to do."

The black-haired woman blinked. "Girl for the smartest woman I know you sure can be dense sometimes. You run a mercenary company that spreads across half a world and that loves you – _you specifically_ – for saving them from total destruction, and the other half has to jump when you say 'frog' for fear of SeeD boots up their asses. Quistis there's _nothing_ you can't do." She sighed and looked into her eyes. "You know I'll be right there with you."

Quistis smiled at her. "I do."

* * *

><p>An elevator ride and a walk across a deserted campus took them to the edge of the Garden, a mixture of clean sea air and machine-oil coming from the garage. SeeDs in uniforms so black they practically gleamed saluted as the two women walked past and Quistis resisted the urge to salute back. Her own uniform was new enough that it still itched against her skin. More than once she had considered just discarding it for civilian clothing like Cid had, but always the niggling thought in the back of her mind that it was the uniform they saluted rather than the woman that wore it. Xu always argued otherwise but Quistis noted dryly that the times Xu herself had appeared in public in civvies could be counted on the fingers of a blind butcher's hand. When she had tried to explain the worry once Xu had been...curt.<p>

_I wear it because it's who I choose to be. You use it like a crutch. You think if you took it off people wouldn't see you as the headmistress? You've done things no other human can claim. There's nothing you need to prove anymore. _

A voice sounded through the empty garage. "_Hey!_"

She smiled as she saw Squall and Rinoa already standing by the car. For all the perfect pair they made they sometimes seemed so mismatched. Rinoa was looking perfectly at ease if a little dour, growing up in a general's household giving her an easy confidence about social functions, and he a mercenary who'd been thrust into the spotlight and found it disquieting.

The young woman looked ready, practically bouncing from one to the other as her husband looked on with something between amusement and adoration. "Ready to go?"

"I think I should be asking _you_ that Rin."

Rinoa's eyes slid away from her gaze and a little bit of the spring left her step. Rinoa loved travelling, almost as much as Selphie. But this journey wasn't being made for pleasure. "I'm good when you are."

She held back to the urge to say something reassuring as the car threaded the narrow roads of the island towards the dock. In the distance she could see Balamb's mountain range jutting up from above the forest and she remembered the red cavern beyond, old home of the elemental pattern they had called Ifrit, long before he and all his fellow GFs had been sealed up and put to slumber in the room in the Garden's core. Some days she missed their presence in her head, but then she remembered the price that they had carried. She remembered the look in the eyes of Shiva as Quistis unjunctioned for the last time and sent her to the core; the feeling of clear-headedness for the first time in years like turning off a television that had been broadcasting static in her mind. The silence, the _feeling_ of her mind totally her own, was both deafening and amazing and she wouldn't have traded back for the world. They could keep their otherworldly power as they slept. Her head was hers at last.

Rinoa saw the far-off look in her friend's eyes and smiled. "Penny for your thoughts?"

Quistis grinned back. "Thinking about trading in seaside air for smog and exhaust. Boy, I can't wait."

"You could get some shopping in at least. It'll be nice to see things when they're _new_ in the shops and not three months out of date." Rinoa had adjusted to the island's slow tempo well but she was still at heart a city girl, and some things you simply couldn't replace on Balamb.

"Assuming you could see any shops through that murk they call air," Squall said.

Xu smirked. "I can you now; bravely cutting your way through enveloping smog to reach the boutiques."

"A grand victory, the brave SeeDs arise victorious over the coughing foe."

She forgot her worries for a moment in just how good it felt to be sitting here laughing with her friends.

It was a moment that she wished could have lasted longer as Xu brought them painfully back to reality. "Speaking of Deling, you've got some hope this time?" she asked Rinoa.

"Maybe. We'll just have to see." Rinoa shrugged, but Quistis knew the younger woman wasn't as casual about it as she looked. They had spent days working long into the small hours, trying to come up with some kind of plan for Timber that they could convince the Galbadian provisional government to go for, and Rinoa had gotten angrier than she had ever seen her when she talked about them, using words anyone who didn't know her well would have been shocked to hear. In the end they worked out something, but whether it was something that Galbadia would feel was enough to allow them to keep _some_ of their old honour, and something the other city-states on the continent would be willing to live with, was up in the air. With the trial hovering over her like a grim spectre she didn't envy Rinoa the journey to her adopted home. She and Xu would be going straight from the Dollet port to Galbadia Garden's repair-site, while Rin and Squall would be staying in the port-city for a few days before moving on to Timber to try and deal with the fallout from decades of occupation followed by war.

She heard the seagulls and gentle wash of the shoreline over the engine, and was already climbing out of the car and towards the boat when she heard Rinoa's surprised voice, and looked back to see her staring into the darkness. "Hey, isn't that…"

They all twisted around in the modified APC to look out of the slits, and Squall gave a smile as he recognised the stranger coming towards them.

"Well I'll be damned."

* * *

><p>"Like two ships passing in the night huh? So to speak."<p>

The moonlight on to the water was almost as bright as the streetlamps lighting the harbour, and they had no trouble seeing who was addressing them. Quistis smiled as Squall embraced the man for a second before pulling back with a smile. "It's good to see you Zell." She marvelled at the sight. In the past Squall's pleasure at seeing a friend – or having a friend at all in fact – would have surprised the people standing there, but not for a long time now.

The martial-artist grinned as he drew back. "You too man. Saw that APC coming up and remembered you guys were headed west sometime real soon. Lucky I caught you I guess."

Rinoa planted a kiss on his cheek. "You're coming home? We would have stayed another day if we knew, it's been so long since we all got together!"

"Nah Rin don't worry about it, I'm just passing through myself." Zell grinned and they got a good look at him. Out of his old (_and horrible_, Quistis didn't say out loud) jacket-and-shorts ensemble Zell would have been unrecognisable from a distance, his old clothes traded in for what looked like sand-blasted leather coveralls. He saw their glances and grinned. "Looks a little rough huh?"

"You look like you got in a fight with a sandstorm," Rinoa said with a laugh, before looking closer at a darker patch on his lapels. "Is that _blood?"_

The martial artist shrugged. "Not mine." He scratched his nose and looked nervous. "Changing the subject for a sec but…any chance I could bum a ride to Garden? I'd really like to get this sand out of my everywhere, if you get me."

Quistis shook her head in silent mirth and waved a hand at the APC they had arrived in. "It's all yours Zell. Just don't crash her into any mountains on the way back."

Suddenly Rinoa took a sharp breath and grabbed him before he could leave. "You came from Dollet?"

Zell nodded, but Squall caught the hesitation in the man's stance as he replied. "Kinda. Passing through there on the way back here. What's up?"

Squall didn't press him on where he'd been, already knowing what Rinoa was going to ask. He beat her to it. "How are things holding together over there?" he asked.

Zell shrugged, realised he was the centre of the conversation, and turned back to face them. "It's pretty rough over there man. Fujin and Seif- the others in the RC are holding Deling City together with spit and glue but they're in the eye of the storm and they don't have much control outside the capital." He shrugged again, something he found himself doing a lot whenever people asked him about the situation on the western continent. "Lotta people hate Galbadians right now, lot of people taking revenge where they can. Attacks on Galbadian dudes on the roads, some really nasty gangs wandering around tearing down signs and banners. Bigger stuff too, some ambushes on convoys. Dollet's pissed as hell and the duchess wants to get her knocks in before the grown-ups arrive to settle things down if you get my meaning."

"What about Timber? What's happening there? Are the Galbadians going to withdraw?" Rinoa asked quickly. At one time she might have been happy at the mess Galbadia had become, but the blood and terror of the Second War and her own new training as a SeeD had shown her how childish such a feeling was. She could dislike them and wish their power broken but she'd never again think the way she had when she was young and full of hate. Except for one man.

Zell turned to face his friend's wife. "Aww hell Rin I dunno. I only passed through for a bed and grub." He fingered his clothes, sand almost pouring out of them as he did so. Wherever the man had been, and Quistis could guess, he'd clearly come back in a hurry. "They weren't exactly opening their hearts to me." he raised a hand as she opened her mouth to ask him something else. "Alright, but you didn't get this from me."

"Of course."

"Those generals are holding onto Timber because it's pretty much all they have. Winhill is two streets and a field and the villages on the plains are just getting' on with life now that the army's gone, they could give a damn what quotas Deling sets. Dollet's crazy – I mean _crazy_ – and I think those old men they call a provisional government just want to keep playing soldier a little longer, and Timber's the only place left they have any power outside of Deling. They want it 'cause they want it. You know the kind of guy they have over there."

Rinoa nodded. She knew.

Zell saw the worry on her face and gave her a playful punch to the shoulder. "Don't worry so much. Timber's tough. Hell, they gave us _you._ I think they'll do fine no matter what happens. You know if things got bad and tough SeeD'd be with you in a second."

She smiled. "Yeah, I do. Thanks Zell. We'll catch sometime, when we're not all running off somewhere." Her smile turned into a grin. "Don't let Laguna work you too hard alright?"

Zell shot a quick glance at Xu, who smirked back at him. "I won't. Take care of yourselves guys."

"You too Zell," Squall said as the sand-covered man climbed up into the APC and drove off. "Well? Are you going to explain what a sand-covered SeeD is doing coming back from Centra?"

Xu feigned surprise. "Centra? _Really?_ He _said_ he came back from _Dollet_. You're hearing things commander. Might want to go to the doctor for a check-up."

Squall sighed as he prepared himself to be lied to. "In all that sand? I seriously doubt Zell was spending all his time at the beach. I recognise that outfit, it's what Esthar gives to its men when they need to cross the deserts. _Xu…_"

Xu's face was the picture of innocence. "Nope. Ask someone else."

Squall turned to Quistis and raised an eyebrow. "Headmistress?"

She didn't like lying, especially not to her friends. But the alternative was to tell him the truth, and that wasn't something she wanted to get into on a dark dockside. He would go ballistic. "Don't look at me Squall, I just work here." She felt the sea across her face as the boat pulled in, and for that moment she would gladly have stayed here forever with her friends, just talking. "Time to go."

"No-one tells me anything anymore," Squall said, as the four climbed into the SeeD vessel and headed out for Dollet.

They settled in for the long trip, Rinoa leaning against Squall on one side and Quistis and Xu sat close on the other. Someone had taken the time to convert the boat from a spartanly-fitted troop-transport into something almost comfortable and Quistis could appreciate the soft seating as the barge heading out over the rough and choppy ocean. She could feel Xu sitting quietly beside her and took comfort in it as she looked at Squall and Rinoa sitting opposite them, the one reading the briefing materials she had provided and the other leaned eyes closed against his shoulder, one hand idly and unconsciously stroking her ring and the other on his arm. It reminded her of a morning far in the past, waking up early one morning and walking to the quad ahead of the student rush. She had found Cid and Edea already there, staring out over the Balamb plains towards the ocean, not saying anything. Her heart had fluttered as she had just watched them sitting there, perfectly content with each other. She thought back to the words she had heard Rinoa say and wondered whether her own parents had done the same.

She vowed that moment to find out.

The ship sailed on.

* * *

><p>Hope you're enjoying the story so far. Just another note asking that if anyone feels like proof-reading, the position is still open.<p>

As always all feedback is welcome.

-Cobray


	7. Bitter Salt Air

"To what do we owe the dubious honour?" Squall heard Quistis whispered under her breath as she saw the two figures staring silent at them from the stone pier as they pulled in.

The woman reached out a hand and Squall grabbed it as the boat bobbed gently in the dock. Her face was a picture of Xu's emotionless patience, but unlike Xu there was no hint of warmth or pleasure underneath. The usual Dollet livery of blue had been replaced with a gray that matched her eyes, the colour of wet cement. "Commander. Leonhart."

He found his feet and tried to look as dignified as a man can when he's patting dust from his uniform. A name floated up from the depths of his dossier-filled subconscious. "Miss Jordin. Thank you for the welcome." She didn't reply.

The man coughed and raised a hand, a welcoming smile on his face. "The Duchess has asked the pleasure of the SeeD guests travelling through her-"

"The _duchess_-" the way Xu said it made sure the title wasn't capitalised "-can surely wait until her 'guests' have recovered from their voyage? We've been on the waves all night Mr Nerva." Dawn was beginning to break over the slate rooftops before them, and the rest they had managed on the boat had been rough and unsatisfying.

The man and the woman shared a glance, his blue eyes meeting her slate-grey ones. Finally he shrugged. "We were going to offer rooms and showers." Unlike his companions, his smile was full of humour, a smile that told you the man behind it was a good one. Somehow Squall didn't believe it.

But sometimes you have to take what's in front of you. "Alright, lead on."

Dollet reared around them, a twisted labyrinth of stone and brickwork that travelled up and down the coastal mountains, culminating above them in the massive communications complex on one slope and the ancient Ducal Palace on the other, the two structures spaced apart on the mountain so that neither could be seen from the other. With the city laid out below it looked as if it had grown out of the old ruling residence, like a landfill of housing, factories and buildings that bled out all the way to the sea. Squall remembered his last-but-one visit with a taste in his mouth like iron, as he and the other SeeD candidates had been literally chased out of the city by Galbadia's giant war-machine. His next visit had been in peacetime but no less nerve-wracking, as he had tried to hold the peace together on the western continent.

The four walked behind the pair as they crossed the Dollet cityscape, and Squall made sure they were far enough away from their guides _nee_ handlers that their whispers could not be easily overheard. "Xu? Tell me what I need."

Xu Tyynes fell easily into her Inform The Commander What He Really Should Have Known Already voice. "Almas Jordin and Leonard Nerva. They're 'retainers' for the duchess. Please note I use the word retainer with the upmost scorn. They're trained knives."

"You know these people?" Rinoa asked. She hadn't been in Dollet at all, and the towering claustrophobia of the city pressed down on her like a weight, the sun being out of view for large stretches of time and shadows covering their every step.

Xu shrugged. "Well…not really. Quistis?"

Quistis didn't take her eyes from the pair ahead of her. "I came over here after the Second War, during the Aftermath."

There had been chaos, Squall remembered. The remnants of the brief time compression had rocked the world as suddenly men and women woke up with their minds full of false memories. Things they could have or had almost done. Shock as they woke up next to wives and husbands they had no memory of marrying, homeless men thinking they had been kings, famous actors and politicians with two sets of lives and only one of them real. A badly-remembered week as humanity had fought to fight off the smog of false memories and re-establish themselves. Not everyone had come out of it alive, as people had woken from fabulous dreams to find themselves leading mundane lives, or the wrong set of memories won and people were driven mad by images and visions from a world that had never existed. The total loss of life was minimal but the damage to mankind's psyche might never fully be known.

Not that certain entities hadn't tried to twist the situation to their own advantage. Dollet had decided to take abrupt vengeance for decades of border skirmishes and attacks, and only SeeD negotiations and Laguna's promise of Esthar intervention _on Galbadia's side_ had stopped the blitzkrieg assault from escalating into a war.

Quistis went on. "They were skirmishers during the attack. A very _specific _type of skirmisher. They scared the hell out of the Galbadians. I don't mean metaphorically, it was their actual job."

Rinoa shrugged. "W used scare tactics in the Timber Owls. That doesn't mean-"

"Lots of slit throats during the night, methods designed to terrify and demoralise. A two-man patrol would be found in the morning with one dead soldier and the other perfectly untouched and he hadn't seen or heard _anything _until his friend died beside him. Traps set to maim instead than kill, mines moved during the night into new spots and no way of knowing where until they took your leg off, that kind of thing. You heard about the missile base massacre?" Rinoa nodded. "That was them, alone. Assassination and intimidation, Rin. They were extremely good at it."

Squall had listened intently. He hadn't come through Dollet often, the Garden usually negating the need to use their eastern port. "You sound like you know them pretty well."

"I know them more than I'd like to. I only heard tales of Almas but I met Mr Nerva, back in Balamb." Quistis' eyes unfocused at the memory and Squall knew from the way her body gave a small flinch the memory wasn't a pleasant one. "At the SeeD recruitment ceremony."

Rinoa stood mouth agape. "He tried to _join?_"

"More than that. He did join. One year was as long as it took for me to know what kind of man he was. He didn't return the next."

"That bad?"

"Some people look at you just wondering how easy you would be to kill."

* * *

><p>"This room."<p>

"Rin…"

"This _room! _Can we stay forever?"

Squall watched as Rinoa stood in front of windows that ran across one side of the room. The view looking down onto the rest of the city was spectacular and she was entranced by it. He sat on the bed –almost fell into it – and just watched her as she held up a hand against glass so clean it was almost invisible. "If you enjoy living within swiping distance of a tiger."

Rinoa spun around and collapsed on the bed next to him. Her weight caused the mattress to sink down even further and Squall found himself pulled closer to her. "Do you ever wonder how we came so far?"

He smiled. "Not really."

"What _did_ you expect? Out of your life I mean, before all the trouble."

He sat up on the bed and looked out over the window, seagulls hovering over the docks and occasionally arrowing down to snag a fish from an unwary boat's net, hauling back into the air with its prize. "Become a SeeD-"

She pantomimed victory. "Success!"

"Then after that…" He shrugged. "That was all. I wasn't exactly the most driven man." He didn't go on. Looking back on his youth he had realised he had wasted so much of it. He hadn't lived, he had merely existed. Now that he finally saw the efforts his friends had gone to to pull him out of that shell it shamed him to think of the things he had missed, childhood memories he had passed as he laid there inside his impenetrable cold exterior.

She turned his head gently and looked him in the eyes. "That's why I'm here, to drive you on. Speaking of which…" She hoisted herself off the bed with an enthusiasm he found he couldn't replicate. Rinoa had spent _her_ youth schmoozing with the upper-class and had developed her own way to avoid becoming screaming-insane by the sheer inanity of the process. "We spend a day here."

"No _more_ than a day please," Squall hoped, and then really hoped the duchess didn't bug her guestrooms.

Rinoa smiled impishly. "You know I wouldn't torture you like that." She paused for a second. "We'll head out tomorrow for _Deling_."She had gotten over the worst of her hate and she didn't spit the word out anymore. He still didn't ask about Caraway though. "You can do your job there and get together with Fujin and the others. The Owls will meet us after a couple of days and take us to Timber." She smiled at the thought of meeting her old friends again, and Squall remembered it had been a long time since he had come with her to her adopted home. That brought another twinge of guilt. Apparently she read it in his face because she sat back down next to him. "Don't look like that Squall, I know how busy you can get, Zone and Watts understand too. For today just relax and take it easy." She smiled again and suddenly her eyes lit up with an idea. "Let's get out of this place, see the sights! Forget the bed, I've never been into Dollet City before."

Squall ran a hand down the support of the bed. It felt old and expensive underneath his hands and he wondered what it would be like living in a golden cage. "Sure." He stood and linked arms with his wife as they left the room and began the long walk out of the compound. "Anywhere in particular?"

"Surprise me," Rinoa said, and breathed deeply as the doors to the outside opened and the clean sea air hit their faces. "Aaaah, that's better."

"You realise we're leaving those two in the belly of the beast."

Rinoa laughed and almost skipped down the stone stairs towards the town. Squall had no choice but to be dragged along. "Better them than us."

* * *

><p>She stood on the threshold of the, looking in. The wall-sized windows of the ducal library threw the light into the room and she resisted the urge to raise a hand to clear her vision. The room beyond was easily the largest in the palace and, she noted with some envy, beat the Garden's reading-room by an order of magnitude, both in scale and fittings. The huge oaken table ran almost the length of it and the single chair faced the door. To anyone entering they would see its occupant sitting there engulfed in light. Someone sat there now.<p>

"Trepe."

"Your grace." Quistis gave a small bow as she entered. As if on cue the windows' curtains came down, replacing the blinding glare with a darkness that quickly receded as electrical lights came up, revealing the Duchess Li Nuo of Dollet. The leader of a city-state started across at the SeeD headmistress with a stern expression and fire in her eyes, and Quistis was reminded again of the way the woman – only midway through her thirties– had come to the rulership so young, and on what terms they had last parted.

"You brought the Sorceress with you." Not a question, merely a statement of fact.

"SeeD cadet Heartilly is travelling through-"

"Don't mince words with me Trepe. I know why you're here." The Duchess' eyes narrowed at the evasion. "First you stop us getting the justice we deserve and now you're trying to get that obscene training ground back up and running and pumping out Galbadian soldiers? You've got some nerve, girl."

Quistis felt her anger rise and tried to hold it down as the Duchess practically spat the words at her. _And here we are. The crux of the argument._ "Myself and Instructor Tyynes are trying to establish Galbadia _Garden_ as a neutral presence on the continent, as negotiators and peacekeepers. Not as a new Galbadian army."

The duchess raised an eyebrow at her, and what she was thinking was clear. "If you assume the decrepit generals that rule Galbadia will use your project as anything other than a chance to gain back their military then you're a fool as well as naïve."

"We have plans in place in case they should try that Duchess." She hated the sound of her voice, like just another politician handing out platitudes to hurt and angry people. She loved, _loved_ her job at Balamb. She would have stayed there forever with Xu if she could. But she knew her conscience would never allow her to rest if she did. It pulled at, told her to get out into the world and held fix it, and would never allow her to rest until it was. This was how she found herself in a dozen cities, dealing with people who had been wounded and broken by Galbadian military expansion, asking them to swallow bile. "Your father would have urged-"

"I'm not my _father_, Trepe. If Galbadia intends to re-arm – and we both know they will – then I won't sit back and allow Dollet to be used as a punching bag anymore."

_Your father was a proud man with more morals than sense. _One day she knew she was going to shout it into the woman's face and then there'd be all hell to pay. "What do you suggest, your grace?" she said, icily polite. She could feel cold stares at her back and knew if she turned around she would see Nerva and Jordin stood behind her, eyes firmly fixed for any sudden movements, and guns at the ready.

Quistis didn't know whether it showed credit to the woman that she was so forthright or down to simply sheer lack of scruples, but Duchess Nuo didn't hesitate when she spoke. "Disarmament. Total and unconditional. Deling City becomes a fiefdom of Dollet. Galbadia Garden under our command, not SeeD's."

"G-Garden becomes D-Garden. " She blinked as she realised what the duchess was really saying. _Oh good Hyne she wants to bring back the old Dollet Empire. _"Your grace, you can't think that the revisionary government will-"

"Don't patronise me. The _revisionary government_ of Galbadia is Fujin Satomi, Seifer Almasy and however many warm bodies they can scrape together on any given morning." The duchess tabbed her fingers on the oaken table and Quistis noticed for the first time since entering the room that it was covered not with tablecloths, but with papers. Maps. "They'll sit down and do as they're told. They can rebuild the city all they want but it will be Dollet standards that fly on the flagpoles."

_She could do it._ Quistis knew. She had memorised the reports she and Xu had pored over as Fujin and the others had sent over what they had. During the Second Sorceress War Galbadia had smashed its military might against the rocks of SeeD and Esthar and been utterly broken by it. What power they had now remained either in the city or as merehopeful dreams. For all the remaining generals liked to posture they were a paper tiger. Dollet's blitzkrieg had shown that; the duchesses troops had made it almost halfway to Deling City before they had encountered a single uniformed soldier. "You're really thinking about this."

"We won't stand by and watch SeeD rebuild that mad empire."

"Is that a threat duchess?" She regretted the words the instant she said them. _Escalation is not the SeeD way._ Cid would have been furious with her.

"Make of it what you will." She looked past Trepe and the doors slid soundlessly open. "You and your subordinates have the run of the city for the next several days, this much we agreed to. Take this time to consider what I've said before you leave for that cesspool to the northwest." She looked aside as a servant slid into place beside her. Her eyes darted quickly from the man to Quistis as he whispered into her ear. "Ms Tyynes says you have a message. It will be in your room. I assume you can find your way back there. Good day."

Quistis turned, ignoring the eyes of the pair of killers of she passed by them. She walked down the corridors and only when she was absolutely sure she wasn't being followed did she let the mask drop. She punched the wall and the sound echoed through the ornate corridors until it had vanished into the distance. She moved on when she was sure of herself.

_God _damn_ that arrogant, twisted woman!_

When the door to the room she and Xu shared – a surprising look from the palace's steward over that – opened and she saw Xu already standing there her mood lifted. "Hey." She walked over to the other woman as she talked and collapsed on the bed, staring up at the richly-painted ceiling. "Hyne but I hate dealing with her."

"Still…temperamental…I believe the word is?"

"I don't know how someone so young stays so angry."

"She's had long practise. Here, this might cheer you up."

She remembered what the duchess had said about a message. "What is it?"

Xu smiled. "You'll never guess."

* * *

><p>From the moment they had left the palace they had begun to wonder how smart the choice had been. Sidelong glances from the prim-and-proper vassals of the Nuo household had turned into gasps and side-long looks from well-dressed industrialists and what passed for nobility in Dollet. As they moved out of the richest quarters of the city and down into what Quistis would probably have termed the 'working-quarters' the looks and occasionally widened-eyes had turned to gasps and actual genuflection. This last had surprised and unnerved Squall until he realised they were not meant for him.<p>

"It's like being some sort of painting in a museum," Rinoa whispered as they passed a woman who had almost fallen to her knees at seeing the pair approach.

Squall could look down the street (literally down, as they descended the slope of the mountain Dollet was built into) onto the rows of sloped houses leading to the plains beyond. He could already see people looking up at them and others approaching them. He'd began to notice a pattern before they'd even made it a hundred yards; the older men all seemed to want to talk to him and shake his hand and the young girls tried to speak to him before collapsing in giggling fits. Rinoa attracted the opposite: The young men who tried to talk to her he could put up with by simply glaring and waiting for them to notice it, but the older women who wanted to kiss her hand and called her 'Sorceress' and the occasional plainly-dressed and very _intense_ younger man with scrawled eyes and wings on his clothes unnerved him.

They sat at the small café and tried to ignore the stares as they drank. Squall's eyes darted about the street as others passed by and he regretted coming outside of the ducal compound. Li Nuo may have been angry and bitter but right now he would have put up with her simmering resentment in exchange for not having to worry about-

"Your holiness?"

He looked around as the man approached Rinoa, and without thinking he put the balls of his feet on the ground, ready to spring up at the man. Unlike the other groupies or Hyne-faithful he was dressed in a simple business suit, the only giveaway to his true intentions a small brass wire twisted into an eye shape, pinned to his lapel. Instantly he hated him.

From her expression Rinoa had caught the sigil too, her eyes guarded as she replied. "Hmm?"

The blonde man smiled. "Holiness, it's an honour to finally meet you. I-"

Squall tuned out and stirred his drink idly as the man gave the standard opening spiel. He had heard it a dozen times in as many towns and villages as the superstitious and religious sought out Rinoa like lightning to a steel rod in the air. The Aftermath of Time Compression had left some people with a mental hole in their minds that some seemed intent on filling with whatever they could fine, and what better thing than the embodiment of the power that had made that gap in the first place?

"-of your father's current situation. We would be glad to offer any assistance we can-"

Squall snapped out of the reverie as the man said the words and Rinoa almost physically jerked away. He put his hand over hers and felt ice.

Her voice was just as cold. "My fath- General Caraway?_ Help_ him?"

The man's smile widened. Squall couldn't place the accent "The general, yes. I'm unworthy of the honour, but I and some of my associates can put words in ears so to speak, and-"

"Cultists." Squall said the word before his brain could grab his lips and he cursed himself as the man turned to him, the glow in his eyes and smile on his face seeming to dim as he turned away from his object of worship.

"We see ourselves more as seekers of a higher truth than as some simple group of helpless sheep."

That and the man's false smile toward his wife told Squall all he needed to know. He caught Rinoa's eye and the pair stood. "I'm sorry but we really have to get back to-"

Squall heard the enthusiasm behind the man's next words and the voice had changed from icy and saccharine politeness to something much smoother and sharper. "She won't help you commander_._ The duchess hates Galbadia and she'll be on Caraway's jury if she has to bribe half a world to do it. If _your_ father was on death row wouldn't you do everything in your power to correct that injustice?"

Squall resisted the urge to get a hand on the borrowed gun at his waist only because they were on a crowded street and his aim was nowhere near as good as his swing. "I'm an orphan, I don't have a father." _As all you cultists damn well know._

The smile came back to the man's face. But this time there was no humour in it, only the reflexive grin of a shark seeing blood in the water.

"Are you so certain?"

* * *

><p>"It's good to hear from you sir."<p>

"_You don't have to call me 'sir' anymore Quisty,"_ the voice came from the other end of the line. _"I thought you'd appreciate a little pick-me-up while you're in such vicious company."_

Quistis smiled at Cid Kramer's use of the name. Even if it was at the other end of a scratchy telephone line bounced off who-knows how many Esthar satellites between Dollet and Esthar she could still hear the same warmth and kindness in it that she had back when he was the headmaster and she a still-green SeeD cadet. The voice hadn't changed over the years. It _was_ good to hear from him, but- "I'll just say to the people listening in on this line that he was talking about Galbadia and not Dollet." She heard laughter from the other end of the phone-line.

"_You tell 'em. Dear girl as much as I wish otherwise this isn't actually a social call."_

"I guessed as much. What can I do for you Cid?"

"_It's more what I can do for you, for once. I've been in contact with a very interesting young lady and she's told me you and Squall have somewhat of an unofficial mission going on."_

"Oh?" She looked over at Xu, who sat on the bed demurely and smiled back at her.

"_I never knew whether one day you kids would want to know, but I always kept the details within reach just in case. I have a name for you."_

The bottom dropped out of her stomach. _Oh Hyne will it be this easy?_ She recognised the feeling for what it was and tried to push it back down but it bobbed back up and told her: _I'm not ready._

"_Quisty I know you had some trouble with…with staying put with other families, before you came to the orphanage. We checked of course and you travelled quite a ways before you came to our door, but we loved you from the day we met you and eventually we just stopped trying to find that first link in the chain. The closest to your real family we got was a name for you, and another for Squall. Both happen to be somewhat on stops of your journey. I'm sorry I can't do more."_

"I'd never blame you Cid, never." She steeled herself. _This is it. I can't back out now. I _will not. _I will know who I am._ "What's the name I'm looking for Cid?"

"_The name is 'Aimsland'."_

* * *

><p>Squall clawed at the leash of his anger but it was already free and working up a head of steam. "And the hell do you mean by that?"<p>

"We know a lot about you, knight."

"That's not a title I like the sound of much," Squall said as he stared across the table at the other man. He could feel the tension in the air as civilians nervously glanced at the tableaux. The two men; one sharply-dressed with the telltale sigil of a Sorceress Cultist and the other an obvious SeeD, and between them the instantly recognisable Rinoa Leonhart _nee_ Heartilly. Squall heard the scurrying of feet as people quickly walked off and he could feel the situation running away from him. But he couldn't step away now. _Orphan. What does he know?  
><em>

The man with the dirty-blonde hair dusted himself down and smiled. "Our people have a bad reputation I'll grant you but our purpose is a pure one."

"I know your purpose well enough. Just get out what you were _sent_ here to say."

The smile tightened and Squall realised he could hear the man's teeth grinding behind it. "We have a peace offering, a gift for the Angelheart. We can get her father out of jail, wipe his slate clean. We have information on _your_ parents we would be quite happy to give over. In exchange for meeting with our leader. Is that so unreasonable? "

"My father is a monster, and he can rot in his cell forever," Rinoa said as she stood. A white light blazed in her eyes and Squall realised he had seriously mid-judged how angry she was. "My husband and I are on a mission of peace. Bribes and underhanded favours won't help heal this wound between Galbadia and the world." Hyne bless her, for all she hated the man she still believed in the dream.

"Your holiness, lady Heartilly-"

"_Leonhart._ My name is _Leonhart!"_

The look on the man's face showed what he thought of that idea. "It breaks me to do this my lady, but you don't know your own purpose on this earth. We do." He smiled again. "Come with us your Holiness, and we can avoid any…unpleasantness."

Squall looked like he was adjusting his jacket. In actual fact he was making sure he could pull his pistol with the minimum fuss. He was no sharpshooter but at this range he wouldn't miss. Then he realised what was making his spine crawl. There was still movement in the street, and all of the people still there were looking directly at him. For a moment the suited man looked almost pitying, but it was quickly wiped off his face for wide-eyed pleasure, as Squall looked around and realised that almost all of the people still in the street and staring at him had at least one hand hidden from view. They came around as he watched, glinting with steel.

_Oh Hyne._

_I've made a huge mistake._

But he wouldn't make a second. "We refuse." _Orphan. He knows something about you, your family.  
><em>

_Maybe. But I won't find out from the likes of him._

"You should not have. Take them."

* * *

><p>She liked to think she would have felt something, some deep connection or intense shock as she heard a first solid link with a childhood long forgotten. The end of a chain handed to her, and the chain reaching off into a foggy future. She could follow that chain link-by-link back to her birth. To find out whom she was. Instead she felt nothing. "Thank you Cid."<p>

"_The least I can for you dear child. If you could track him down, speak to Squall and give him the other? I'll see you soon, I hope."_

"Me too Cid." Quistis hung up the phone and turned to face Xu, walking over the woman as she sat on the bed. "You've been busy. Between me talking about this stuff back at Balamb and us leaving for Dollet there must have all of five hours?"

Xu smiled impishly, craning her head up until she could meet her eyes. "Six. The call only took one of them."

"It mattered to you that much?" Quistis' lips touched against Xu's and she pushed over gently until Xu fell back against the soft mattress and Quistis stood above her.

"It matters to you, so it matters to me," Xu said breathlessly, then put a hand on Quistis' abdomen to push her away. "Not here."

She wouldn't be budged. "Oh?" She pushed down harder and felt her body melding against Xu's, could feel the other woman's body breathing beneath her own. _God I love you so much._ Years of time wasted chasing after a man so uninterested in others that _other people_ had seen it before she had, then years more throwing herself into her work and ignoring all else around her. All the while Xu had stood behind her, the faithful deputy and guard. It would have been frustrating beyond all belief. It must have taken an act of supreme courage that day when she had finally cornered her and told her. They had talked for hours that night. Afterwards. "Why not?"

Xu's eyes darted to the side and she whispered in Quistis' ear: "I don't intend to share you with an audience."

"_FU-"_ As quick as the moment had arrived it had vanished as Quistis practically jumped back from the bed like a wounded animal. Only just in time.

The knock came at the door and the man walked in without waiting for answer. Xu sat up quickly as Leonard Nerva strode into the room and looked from one woman to the other. "Sorry for the interruption."

_Liar._ "Yes?"

The smile on the young man's face went wider. "There's a situation I've been asked to make you aware of."

* * *

><p>The gunshot rang out across the street. Those who had been looking at the scene from a distance turned and ran as their fear finally got the better of their curiosity, and those who had been waiting for their cue surged forward.<p>

The man dropped to the ground screaming and clutching his side. Squall cursed as the gun jerked in his hand and he tried to remember what Irvine had attempted to teach him. He took stock of the remaining attackers as they paused to watch their comrade rolling on the floor crying out for help, and Rinoa was already on her feet and standing by him. Six bullets, one already used on the man crawling away on his knees, and at least seven crazed-looking men and women with sharp objects in their hands that had no need of ammunition.

"Squall, stand behind me."

_"Kill the false knight, but if you harm the angel the boss will have your worthless eyes to the ravens!_" The blonde businessman who had started the whole mess was standing back with that shark-like grin on his face and a hand clutched around something long and metal. Squall could make out a cross-shaped piece of metal, brass wire twisted around the four spokes into crude facsimiles of wings. His worst fears confirmed. He-

"_Right now Squall!"_

Without thinking he threw himself sideways, and behind him Rinoa's eyes lit up as something primal and ancient was called up from the depths of the woman's soul, and out into the world.

Everything went white.


	8. The Witch of Thorns

_I can feel it, the sudden surge as power is taken and channelled upwards, the rainbow sky becoming a swirling maelstrom. All the way up to whatever surface there is up there past the stacked layers of memory and magic._

_I walk the winding corridors of the outer cloisters, staring out over the ocean as windows pass by me, as the power is drawn out of me. I pay no attention; it is a barely-perceptible tug. Here at the end of the world all that remains to me inside this castle is power and they are free to take it all. The only movement is the soft sound of air moving beside me as my companion hovers nearby, guarding against nothing. A pale blue bruise stands out on her cheek, the only remnant of my assault on her, trying to bring forth some emotion of spark of self via shock, but she just gently held my hands away from her until I stopped, still as emotionless and still as a doll. I try and lose myself in memories again as the pull continues, more intense than before but still a minor inconvenience. Those above me, on the other side of the rainbow sky will be feeling the pull more I know, being closer to whatever surface exists to grasp for it. I wonder if one day my final reserves will be drained and my castle will collapse around me as it's foundations are torn away to be used elsewhere, but I see no need to panic. There is an ocean of power inside me and I find no reason to prevent its departure. Instead of wondering about what purpose it is being put to I think back once again, farther back, to when words still rang inside the castle's halls, and I was not alone._

* * *

><p>"<em>It feels so empty," she said softly.<em>

_I turned to see her staring into the castle courtyards. They have appeared seemingly overnight from whatever whim my dreaming mind thought up, but empty; huge stone-paved rooms open to the air. I smile. _This_ is something I can fix. I wave a hand and concentrate momentarily and suddenly the stone slabs crack and tear as stems and vines burst from beneath the ground. Rock and granite transmute into soil at a thought and suddenly a grey slate quad has become a flowering oasis that grows as we both watch._

_She raises a hand and watches with a smile on her face as the vines grow around it, coiling around her arm and fingers. A small pinprick as a rose-bush grows up and around her fingers, and she laughs as a pure red flower blossoms on her palm. I watch the smiling face and think for a second that there may be some hope. That even in my failure I have not been trapped in an endless hell._

_The hope is short-lived and snuffed-out as a shimmer of concern crosses her face. "I know this flower."_

"_Its-" I begin to tell her, but stop as I watch her face fall as she tries to remember. I watch for what seems like minutes as she struggles over the simple name and eventually I cannot stop myself. "A rose." I say the name quickly, but feel ashamed. I did not tell her to ease her panic but my own._

_She smiles, but this time the smile is tentative and false, and I can see her thinking _it hasn't stopped_ as she looks at me. Behind us the Garden is trapped between rampart growth at my command and wilting death at my fear and self-loathing. Plants and trees bloom grow and die within seconds as they are trapped trying to obey my known and unconscious demands. I turn and leave her there in the lunatic sight, the rose-bush covering her arm already a dead thing._

_I only catch a few words before the doors swing groaning shut, and they make me want to weep with the emotion and forlorn despair in them._

"_Oh well..."_

_Even though she is already resigned to her fate I refuse to dwell on it. I leave her there in her garden, staring at a rainbow of colours she can no longer remember, their names devoured by her own blood's magic._

* * *

><p><em>The pull is slackening now. I wonder idly what happens up there. Back when the worlds above me past the rainbow sky still sparked my curiosity I tried to work out whether it could be done, whether some message could be passed up away from my world, through the innumerable worlds above, and to the surface of the strange prison-stroke-sea we inhabit. There never was one though and eventually I stopped looking for a way. Some days<em>

_weeks_

_months_

_years_

_it feels as though the castle itself is slowly sucking the energy out of me, smothering my will to achieve in a thick blanket of unchanging nothing, using its weight to grind me down into a well of habit and routine which I will one day find myself unwilling, unable and uncaring to break. I used to range across the world outside the stone walls to see what could be found, whether some other fragments of humanity besides my erstwhile and silent companion had been drawn down. Eventually I stopped, whether because I finally realised that there was nothing, or because I simply no longer cared. In any case any other being down her would be on no terms to speak with me. My final actions in the world made sure of that._

_The pull finally stops. Even though monstrous power has been drawn and channelled the tug never reached anything more than a mild upset. I wonder how far down I am in this prison. I know that there are levels far deeper than my own, layers where no rainbow light penetrates, unlucky enough to lack even my own silent companion. I wonder about the women down there, trapped alone in their castles and only their own minds for company. I wonder too about those above me. Surely some must be close enough to reach out and try to break through to the surface? But the sky of the world must be impenetrable, for no message has ever reached me from below, not even from the next level down, and any message I have tried screaming into that rainbow light has ever been replied to. I wonder about the people above me, what their own realities must be like. Maybe their pasts turned out differently, maybe even as I live in this empty hell they are luckier, and their castles are glorious heavens. Maybe they are different enough from me to consider other beings merely tiresome burdens, and to them my own situation - alone with my thoughts - would be a glorious paradise._

_Hell is relative, I suppose._

_Do you remember?_


	9. Sever

Her instincts told her what was happening before her brain did and suddenly without knowing why she was banging on top of the open-top jeep they were racing through Dollet on.

"Stop! _Stop!"_

She was jerked back and down into her chair as it screeched to a halt and the driver looked back at her in confusion. She caught Xu's worried query but had already kicked open the door and was reaching to drag the woman out onto the street and into the nearest sheltered doorway they could find.

Xu forget herself for long enough to use her nickname. "Quisty what the _hell-_" She stopped speaking and Quistis knew she felt it. Like thunderstorms to a sailor the warning signs were absolutely clear as day to those who knew and obtuse as higher mathematics to those who did not. Dollet's air, already infused with seawater, had changed from bracingly cold to incredibly warm and humid as the wind died, and their clothes were already becoming soaked as they merely stood around. She could taste copper as though she had bitten her tongue but knew this was something else. She glanced up once only to check whether this was some natural phenomenon but was unsurprised when she saw clear skies.

That seconds earlier the clouds had covered the sun was slightly worrying however.

The driver of the jeep still sat dumbly in the driver's seat, mute and waiting for orders or explanations, and Quistis leaned out of the doorway to force him over. For his part he merely tuned to look at Leonard Nerva, who had somehow already known to be out of the wide-open area of the street, who shook his head once and turned to Quistis. He had already taken shelter one door down from him, his own combat training telling him that he should pay attention when other people seemed to know more than him. He had to shout to hear over the background dim of the suddenly-full streets, as people streamed past them, away from the direction they had moments ago been travelling. "Ms Trepe! May I ask what in god's name is going on?"

"_Sorcery! We need to get-_"

The rest of the words were lost to nothing, as if the atoms carrying the sound-waves from herself to the Dollet guardsmen were simply plucked out of the air and crushed. Which they might as well have been. Quistis heard nothing but her own breathing as around her light bounced back and forth across the streets towards them. She opened her mouth to shout a warning to the oblivious civilians still standing around, some frowning as they suddenly found their voices had been plucked away from them. She heard only nothing and was reduced to wild arm-gestures. Some were already running wildly away from the light and as she sheltered back in the doorway, Xu on the other side looking calmly and calculatingly out onto the street, she looked back and saw it.

The white light seemed to almost solidify as they watched, the bright rays that danced across the street and from any reflective surfaces they could find turned into mass that slid across the street and house walls and forced her to look away as the glare become too bright for words. Formless spectres seemed to dance and sway in the air, tendrils of pure Sorcery that flowed along the street and wherever they touched life and colour was sucked out of the world. She caught one moving toward them and didn't dare do anything but cower as it came upon them, and their ride still stuck, unmoving in the middle of the street. And the man in it.

She watched struck dumb and unable to move as the Jeep dissolved from the back, the luckless soldier still untangling himself from the driver's seat as the wave carried on over him and through him, and she turned away as the man opened his mouth in a silent scream. Her eyes looked up at the sky and she watched as the thunderclouds formed from nothing into a circle. If you extended that circle all the way down to the ground, she knew, you would find the place they had seconds ago been running towards.

_My god Rinoa, what are you doing?_

* * *

><p>All Squall's life he had trained himself to defend those who couldn't defend themselves. To guard those weaker than he. Even when he had been younger and much, much dumber he had always known that this was a righteous cause, that it was somehow part of himself that he should be the lion that protected the lambs, to be the sword that guarded the weak. Now finally he knew how it must feel to be the one watching dumbly from behind the blade as someone fought on his behalf. To be the protected rather than the protector.<p>

He watched as the white storm raged, with himself and Rinoa at the centre. He tried to reach up and grab her hand but when his fingertips came within reach something electric and _primal_ shot through his arm like a thunderbolt and he whipped it back half expecting to see burns. He could taste blood in his mouth. Instead he just sat there, pistol held uselessly in his hands, and watched.

Some tried to fight back, shooting or flailing wildly into the whorls of power with home-made weapons or cheap guns. They fell first as their _metal_ devices made contact with the power and it flowed through them into their bodies, burning and purifying as it went, until nothing but tasteless ash remained. Others had simply fallen to their knees and stared either into the heavens or Rinoa's face, their mouths working in silent prayers as they watched lights dancing above them. Some reached out with ecstatic smiles as the silent majesty of Rinoa's power flowed over and around them, and they came away with burned hands and satisfied faces.

Only one man still watched, knelt on the ground like a knight before his queen and seemingly utterly unperturbed.

"_RIN!"_

He reached past the white halo surrounding her, wincing as the power tried to burn his arm to a cinder, but whether by sheer force of will or some fragment of his wife still lucid and watching as her power burned through her it got through, and he pulled as hard as he could. Suddenly Rinoa gasped as her blazing white eyes turned back to their normal brown and with a sharp gasp she toppled on top of him.

As sudden as the power had exploded into the world it receded, the roar and storm of her Sorcery turning from a burning gale into a howling wind, to a fast and stinging wind, finally into a light breeze that caressed his face and caused him to see stars in his eyes as it sucked itself away from the world and back into her soul.

When he finally risked opening his eyes and looking out, at first he saw nothing but white. Like something had sucked all the colour out of the world and erased any sign of pigment in sight. In the distance he could see brick-red scorch marks where the power had touched and caressed but not entirely blasted the streets into white nothing, but within a half-mile everything was white. He coughed and looked down at his clothes and realised this included himself.

Rinoa groaned and he turned quickly as she put a hand to her head.

"I really lost it. God my head hurts." She opened her eyes and looked at Squall. For a second she merely stared at him, then she burst out laughing. "You look like cartoon. Squall? What's wro-"

He caught her mouth before she could shout out, as her eyes ran over the scene before her, and he could almost see the thoughts running through her mind. Steadily he climbed to his feet and brought her with him. He took his hand from her shoulder and saw it leave behind a white streak on her clothing. He hoped to Hyne it was nothing dangerous.

"Magnificent."

He spun and almost lost his footing, so shocked at the words he didn't even think to raise his pistol. Alone among the shell-shocked or religious-ecstatic cultists still arrayed around them the man in the business suit who had threatened them (_that must have been it,_ Squall thought with the ever-functioning soldier's-part of his mind) sat kneeling in the street, eyes wide and locked raptly onto Rinoa. "You stay the hell away from us," Squall hissed, trying to lift the pistol. But the metal felt tonnes-heavy in his hands and all he managed was a threatening wave. Tiredness washed over him and he almost collapsed, and suddenly again it was Rinoa propping him up as she walked him slowly away from the epicentre of her magical fury.

Insight flashed through Squall's mind and he almost tore himself out of Rinoa's grasp as he turned to bear down on the cultists that had tried to kill him (_and kidnap Rinoa Squall, don't forget don't EVER forget)_. "What did you mean when you talked about my father?"

The man blinked and the dumb-faced worship slid off his face to be replaced with the shark-like cunning. "Mr Leonhart?" The name sounded like slime on his tongue.

Squall fought the urge to punch the smug bastard in the face. _"What do you know?" _He could hear sirens in the distance and Rinoa's arm trying to pull him away and back to a chair as stars closed around his vision.

"No. We offered a hand and you spat in it. Now it will _cost _you, Leonhart. Find us when you're ready to pay. We'll be watching."

"_Who are you people!"_

The man smiled his oil-slick smile again, turning to walk away as Rinoa dragged Squall back onto the café's chair, still white with whatever dust Sorcery had coated the street with. She ran a hand across his face and it came away coated in white, and the part of his brain not shocked into insensibility really hoped that dust was all it was.

* * *

><p>Later on in her life Quistis would think back on this moment, and one of the things that would stand out in her memory would be the fact that Leonard Nerva had merely watched with interest as the wave of inhuman power had washed over the poor Dollet soldier trapped in the truck. Back in Garden, what seemed like eons ago, she had once looked on as a student played with a turtle that had wandered into the quad grounds from the outside. After taking his enjoyment the young man had turned the turtle onto its back and watched the helpless creature with curiosity as it had begun to bake in the hot sun, unable to right itself. The expression of absolute detachment on Nerva's face had changed not one iota since that day, and idly she wondered whether throwing the young man out of Garden had been such a good idea. At least she would have been able to keep an eye on him.<p>

She brushed the dust from her clothes - _just dust, don't even think about what else it could be - _and walked up to the frozen man and shook him. The man tried to jerk away from her touch but the death-grip his hands had on the jeep's wheel prevented him, and she had to almost dig with her fingernails to separate the two.

"What in God's name- _you!"_

She turned as the new voices came into hearing range and turned as a group of Dollet soldiers – _no, policemen_, her mind corrected itself – ran up to the strange tableaux. She raised a calming hand to explain herself but the men weren't looking at her. She realised that Nerva's reputation must have spread within the city-state as well as without. "Excuse me."

The man whirled on her angrily as his subordinate continued to speak with the supernaturally calm Nerva. "Who the hell are-" He noticed her badge and bit back the words he had been about to shout at her. "Ma'am?"

"You need to evacuate this area. There's been a major para-magic accident here." She prayed he didn't inquire further.

Her prayers were answered. "We're getting people out as fast as we can." He went to turn away but stopped at the last minute and when he looked back the confusion and not a little fear he was hiding broke through his blank expression. "Is this a SeeD thing?" _We could use some help._ He didn't say.

She ran through the options in her mind. Deny? But Leonard could say that he had heard her shout 'sorcery' as the wave had come and gone. Tell the man it was Sorcery? God no, they would be covered in cameras and rumours before the day was out. She settled for words that meant nothing. "I'm not sure, but I'd be glad to help in any way you need."

Xu, hands almost unconsciously trying to wipe the dust from her uniform, walked over as the man turned away. "Is Rinoa okay?" she asked Quistis under her breath_._

"I don't know."

"Go find out."

Quistis could see Nerva out of the corner of her eye walking towards them, and an explanation was something she had but didn't particularly want to part with. "But-"

"Go. I'll handle the duchess' tame killer."

She nodded a word of thanks, and as calmly as she could she looked around, found the streets down which the white dust and dissipating glare was strongest in, and began to walk towards them.

* * *

><p>He had taken Quistis' words on board and talked with Rinoa before they had been summoned. He had gotten his story straight and still, in some way, it felt like going before the schoolmistress after breaking something valuable. A little different now though. Even though SeeD instructors had all been armed within the classrooms, they had drawn the line at actually pointing those weapons at their students. Li Nuo placed no such limit on herself. Even more annoying that her anger didn't seem to even be directed at them, but at the woman who stood in the centre of the room. Not that they were not watched of course. Twin pairs of eyes remained fixed on them; one soulless and empty and another filled with amusement as Almas Jordin and Leonard Nerva watched the faux-questioning.<p>

"I'd protest in the strongest terms but my God Trepe there really aren't any words strong enough. Do you have any idea what kind of damages your subordinates caused?"

Quistis' face shifted not a millimetre as she replied. "Were there any deaths in the-"

The duchess stood up, slapping down the report onto the floor of the throne room as she almost literally stalked towards the blonde woman. "No, and that's the only reason you're not all locked in the dungeons as we speak. Half a mile of city block covered in _ashes_ and my staff don't even know where to start describing what's happened to them. Three dozen people practically catatonic and-"

She went on. Squall thought that somehow it would have been better if the anger had been towards them, the actual instigators of the situation. But the duchess had taken one look at the couple before turning to Quistis and letting the floodgates open, a wave accusations and thinly-veiled insults that the headmistress had to let flow over her. Once, months back when she had returned from a summit between Galbadia and the other world powers, he had found her down in the cafeteria alone, a half-empty bottle of wine open in front of her, and he had sat down and helped her finish it as she vented.

_Sometimes it's not about who's right or wrong Squall, it's about which party will be forced to eat the most shit._

Well, Quistis was sure as hell being made to eat it now.

"Bringing a damned _Sorceress witch _into-"

But that was _it_. "Duchess." He stepped forward into her vision and felt the guards tense up around him, weapons held not quite pointed at the floor but not pointed up either. At least they still rated that much civility.

Li's head whipped around the same time as Quistis relaxed slightly, glad of any minor respite from the torrent of abuse. "What?"

"Has anyone come forward about the men that attacked us?" He had submitted the report half in hope and half by habit, and he had expected little.

The duchess almost sneered. "No-one remained conscious long enough to confirm or deny _anything_ Commander Leonhart, after what your tame angel did."

The only reason he didn't snap there and then was Rinoa's calming hand on his shoulder. He swallowed bile as he stepped back and the duchess returned up the marble steps to the throne.

"You and your companion will leave my city_ tonight_ commander. I have a state to maintain and I will not allow SeeD to tear it down either in person" her eyes flicked momentarily to Rinoa, "or by proxy." Back to Quistis. "Almas, escort the sorceress and her knight to their rooms. They haven't had a chance to unpack much so I assume they will not require much time to sort their possessions for the journey ahead of them."

Quistis gave a small bow as they all turned to leave. "I'm so sorry for what happened your grace, but once we return from Galbadia I can assure-"

"Not you."

Squall and Rinoa turned back, half out of the grand oaken doors, as the twin words fell into the room as solid and dark as lead ingots. Quistis blinked and Squall knew she was thinking she had misheard. "Your grace?" OUt of the corner of his eye Squall could see Xu glaring daggers at the older woman.

The duchess smiled and Squall shivered just a little at how full of angry pleasure it was. "You will remain here in Dollet, headmistress. You said to my militiaman you would render any help you could, did you not?"

For the first time in Squall's memory he could see real fear on his adoptive sister's face. "Your grace, I'm afraid that I have other-"

"I am not requesting, I am _telling _you, Trepe." Li Nuo leaned forward and in her face lined with stress and frown-lines Squall and the others could see real hatred. "You'll remain here until these matters can be put to rest and any SeeD complicity in the _attack_ in my kingdom brought to light."

Xu stared at the duchess with her legendary detachment, her barriers back up and anger held under the surface, but Squall and Rinoa took a step back into the throne room as they both shouted at once:

"I don't-"

"You _can't_-"

They were stopped as shuffling feet and the all-too recognisable _snap_ of safeties being removed echoed in the cold chamber.

Li Nuo's voice was quiet and yet somehow deafening in its response. "I can and I will. Any attempt to leave will be considered a hostile act against the Dolletian government by SeeD." She leaned back on the gilt throne. "Our army may not be half of Esthar's but our navy is spectacular Ms Trepe. And Balamb is such a small _island. _Remember it."

_She wouldn't dare._

Quistis stood looking at the floor for a second, arms crossed in a pose Squall knew well, before glancing back at the two, and then finally back to the duchess. "Will you permit me a moment with my subordinates?"

She waved a hand at her idly, satisfied with the woman's admittance of defeat. "As you will."

The doors swung shut ponderously as they left, the heavy slam as they met closed feeling to Squall like a prison being locked.

* * *

><p>Squall was first. "Quistis I-"<p>

"No time." She faced them both, talking fast and low, as Almas and Leonard watched from a safe distance. "Squall, I need you."

"I'm yours."

Quistis smiled quickly before the gravity of the situation wiped it away. She glanced at the two guards before leaning in and whispering as fast as she dared. "You're going to have to take over my job on the continent. We weren't going to Galbadia to work on G-Garden. I'm sorry Rin but you'll be getting to Timber a little later than you had hoped."

"What-" he stopped himself as Quistis rolled over him and spoke fast.

"You need to stay in Deling- _don't_ argue with me now Squall, please. The visit about G-Garden was just our cover. SeeDs are being murdered, around the world. We were going to Galbadia to take over the hunt."

Rinoa just stared open-mouthed. "What can we do?"

Quistis smiled, she knew the disappointment the young woman must be feeling about being kept away from her adopted hometown and loved her for throwing it out to help her friends. "Find Fujin and ask what you can do to help. There are killers out there and we need to know who they are and what they want, whether they're working for a nation or just crazy."

Something clicked in Squall's brain. "Zell. He wouldn't say what he was doing in Balamb."

"Yeah, he's been working on hunting down the source in a more…_direct_ way. He's been tracking the assassins across the world and President Loire gave him free reign basically. The president thinks Sorceress Cultists have something to do with it and I think he's right. He- what?" She stopped only when she noticed the shocked look on Rinoa's face.

Squall's emotions ran between surprise and anger as he realised what she had kept from him. "Quistis, we were_ attacked_ by sorceress cultists in the middle of the _street_." He ran through what had happened and Quistis' eyes widened as she heard their side of the story. "What the _hell_ did you think you were doing not telling us about this?"

She raised a hand to plead off. "I swear to god Squall I had no idea there would be any cultists in Dollet, not with what the duchess thinks about sorceresses." Squall held his tongue. "Zell would have given me his report over the phone when I got to Deling. Fujin will have it by the time you get there. Get what they know and try and work this out." Quistis turned as guards approached them. "Somebody out there is hunting down SeeDs Squall. Somebody out there is hunting down _you_."

"We'll find them first," Squall promised.

The man had one hand held on his rifle as the other gestured down the marble hall. "Ma'am? If you could come with us?"

Only a person that knew her very well would have been able to interpret her utterly silent movement and blank face as coiled rage underneath Xu's perfect mask of civility as Quistis allowed herself to be led away from the others. She turned back to them one last time. "Squall I know there's gallons of bad blood between you two, but Seifer is the only man we have in Deling. You don't have to like him but _please_ just work with him." She gave a smile and turned to Rinoa. "Keep these boys from killing other."

Any other time he might have hesitated, but not now. "Of course."

"I won't let you down Quisty," Rinoa said.

Quistis smiled. "I know you won't, cadet." Finally she looked at Xu. "Sorry."

"Don't apologise," the dark-haired woman replied in return, so quiet Squall almost missed it. "Love you."

"Me too. Give Squall what you got from Cid."

Squall glanced at Xu, who shook her head ever so slightly - _not now -_ and filed it away for when they were out of the cloying false hospitality of the seaside city. "See you soon, headmistress."

"You too, commander." She saluted, and Squall returned it as Quistis walked away into the depths of the Dollet ducal palace, and as the tall blonde woman walked away Squall felt a chill run down his spine. Suddenly the future that had seemed to certain and secure to him was balancing on a tightrope.

Xu sighed, and in it Squall heard something deeper than mere tiredness. He wondered if it had been Rinoa walking away into the depths of the Dollet palace, would he have been as calm. "Rin? Commander?"

"Hmm?"

"Let's get the hell out of here."

They had a long road ahead of them.


	10. Reverberations

"Just put me through to Fujin."

"_I'm sorry sir but she's on patrol in the city right now. I can take a message if you like or ask Mr Almasy if he-"_

"No that's alright I'll try again later. Thanks anyway."

"No joy?"

"Nah." Zell turned away from the secure comm terminal, a huge bulky monstrosity that Esthar had delivered to Garden weeks ago with something between joy on their faces and relief at getting it off their hands. Back when it had arrived Zell had watched as four luckless and pressganged students had hauled it off to the Garden's control room, then wandered off as they had spent the next day installing the damn thing under Odine's loud and not-always-lucid commands. Now it sat against the inner hull like some kind of beached metal whale, eating power from the central engines and using it to bounce signals off whatever crazy Esthar devices Odine had put into orbit. He'd asked for an explanation out of simple curiosity but the response had been so far over his head he couldn't even see the bottom. The tiny genius had promised it would link up the organisation and give them total security as they spoke, putting Balamb Garden in contact with Trabia and Galbadia at the touch of a button and no eavesdroppers allowed. To Zell Dincht standing here right now though none of that mattered if there wasn't someone at the other end to _pick up the damn phone_.

"You could always take a break," Nida said as he watched the blonde man pace up and down the cockpit. He hadn't said anything when Zell had wandered in and asked to use the device although his fingers had twitched as Zell's hurry had turned into impatience. He solved the problem by opening the small panel hidden at his workstation and throwing the man a beer.

Zell barely even glimpsed at the can as he caught it one-handed. "Thanks. I just hate waiting around, you know."

"You sound like Raijin. Relax, okay, that's an order."

Zell snorted and turned to look at Nida. While technically his superior he could count on the fingers of one hand when he had been given a command by the man. For that matter he could add the amount of times he'd even seen him leave Garden and not need to use his toes. Some SeeDs made a point of wearing their emblem everywhere they went (and yeah he had to admit the attention was nice sometimes, but there's a point where you have to acknowledge you still put your pants on one leg at a time like everyone else). Nida seemed to take it to the opposite extreme. Zell could remember an Esthar shore-leave, followed and interviewed by the press and hammered with question after question, where the quiet young man had just sat and watched with amusement as he was ignored in favour of the legendary Orphanage Gang. "Rather be relaxing on the way to somewhere though."

For his part Nida had trouble understanding the wanderlust so many of his comrades seemed to share. He got to sit at the centre of the Garden network like a spider at the centre of its web. There was nothing happening in the world that he didn't know about, and he could do it all from the airy comfort of Balamb. He was also the best pilot the mercenary organisation had, and _everyone_ knew it. He loved his job. "Weren't you supposed to be headed off to Esthar?"

Zell shrugged. "Xu said the same thing you did."

_Take a break Dincht. You're going to burn out before you hit your thirties._

Nida shrugged. "So listen to her."

"Don't you _ever _get worked up about anything?"

"Nope. And speaking of getting worked up what's the slave-master had you doing anyway?" Nida shared a somewhat contentious relationship with Xu, his equal. The latter demanded perfection from anyone, timetables and constant goals, whereas his own philosophy ran more towards getting it done and then hey, if there was nothing else to do why _not_ relax?

Zell was about to shrug and wave off the question when he remembered that Nida's job meant that he knew anyway. Plus unlike his boss who he _had_ refused to tell earlier, Nida wasn't married to the subject of his mission. "Her and Lag- President Loire have had me chasing sorceress cultists over in the east."

Nida frowned. "What, in Ifrit's old cavern? I didn't think- Wait, you mean the eastern _continent?_ Sorceress-lovers in Esthar? I thought Laguna took care of them all after he got rid of Adel." And _that_ was no longer a name spoken of with fear.

"People are just idiots I guess."

"Speaking of which…"

He turned as Nida cocked a finger back at the oversized control board and saw the green blinking light. _Finally._He breathed a sigh of relief and walked over to the terminal and flipped it, Nida's watchful eye on him in case he should accidentally break something. For all its Estharian tech the entire device still looked like a giant battlefield radio and he picked up the handset as he spoke into it. "Dincht."

"_Good to hear from you at last. How's the desert"_

Zell laughed into the receiver. "Mr President."

* * *

><p>"What have you got for me Zell?"<p>

"_Nothing good sir."_

Laguna Loire, president of Esthar listened silently as the young man broke down what he knew for the man. About halfway through the debrief he slammed his fist into the desk hard enough to leave a mark, which joined the others already there. He could feel an air of tiredness set on him and he sighed as Zell finally finished his escape from the cultist camp and his encounter with the knife-wielding man. "Alright, thanks. Good work Dincht. Tell Xu what you told me and then take some time off, I'll call you if I need anything?"

"_Are you sure? I can come back if you wa-"_

Zell's voice was cut off as Laguna keyed the connection between Esthar and Balamb closed. His own terminal was built into the presidential desk and he lived to joke the heat it gave off kept his legs warm in the winters. "God _damnit!"_

"Trouble?"

Laguna looked up from his thoughts as Kiros walked into the room. For all the years after the two of them along with Ward had cast off their uniforms and became statesmen rather than soldiers he had served as a civilian advisor. But there was something solid and…well…_martial_ that refused to be scrubbed out of the tall wiry black man. Even his clothes looked more like a uniform than a suit. "You could say that." Zell's words were repeated in the fairly small private room at the summit of the presidential palace.

"I hate to say I told you so." Kiros' expression told Laguna that it was something he very much wished to say.

"Then don't," Laguna said testily.

"You know what your problem is Mr President?" Kiros went on without giving him a chance to answer. "You expect people to repay you in kind."

"What, you think I should have just locked them all up?"

"Yes."

They'd had the argument a dozen times since the coup. At first Laguna had won easily, and he had the populace grudgingly accepting that rapprochement and forgiveness would see history looking down kinder on them than if they purged and burned. Unfortunately with recent attacks, miniature uprisings and sabotage Kiros' solution was looking a little more compelling. He took this side of himself and pushed it back down into his irrational mind where it belonged. Esthar had suffered under an inhuman and monstrously powerful tyrant for the better part of fifty years, he'd throw away the presidential seal and burn the palace to the ground before he saw himself turning into another. "Well we won't."

"Loire you're talking about people who hate you because you literally – not figuratively or metaphorically – _literally_ killed the avatar of their god." When Kiros was mad he tended to slip back into calling him by his last name.

_You're really worried about this. _"_I_ didn't kill her."

Kiros sighed. He knew the man was simply talking to fill the room while his brain thought and he went along with it. Laguna hated silence. "You imprisoned her in space and then when the loyalists-"

"Cultists."

"-_Loyalists _freed the bitch you ordered SeeD to come and kill her. Lest we forget ending two centuries' worth of glorious isolation and allowing the barbarian foreign hordes onto Esthar's holy continent into the bargain."

"God, do they really think like that?"

"They're not rational people Mr President. They're angry old firebrands and worried old ladies who look around and see that this isn't the country they grew up in any more. The fact that the country they _did_ grow up in was a goddamn tyrannical shithouse doesn't really register with them."

_He was _really_ worried about this._ Laguna looked out over the city. Planted dead central among the skyscrapers and towers of the technological utopia, the palace had a commanding view of Esthar, and he could find himself lost in it for hours sometimes just staring down at the city. When the dust had settled after the coup the populace had embraced him and it had been the most enthralling and terrifying moment of his life. _This_ was pure adulation and power thrust onto him, and all in that one moment as they had offered him the presidency he had seen how easy it could be to become like Adel or Caraway. "What's our next move?"

"Track down this man; Aimsland, he's their leader/head minister, insomuch as they have one. We've heard the name thrown about in bars and alleys and Zell confirmed it when they ran him out of Centra." Kiros looked at the small crystal-screen printout in his hand. "Judging by the reception the boy got asking about him I'd bet money he's leading the militant arm, and that means-"

"-The SeeD murders. No way do I take that bet, I've already lost too much money to 'em." He'd learned not to wager against Kiros' ideas. Mostly because the job of President meant that any information he got Kiros saw first anyway, assuming the man even deemed it important enough to bother him with.

"Ms Trepe and Ms Tyyne will be arriving in Galbadia shortly; hopefully they can help Almasy and Satomi with the problem there. I don't think that- Laguna?"

Seifer. Now there's something that had been bothering him, a little itch in the back of his mind that asked him; _is this _really_ a good idea,_ whenever he heard the name.

SCENE BREAK

"_You're a hard man to find."_

"That_ cliché? Are you serious Loire?" Seifer smirked as he said it._

"_That's President Loire," Kiros said testily._

"_Well that _does _explains the retinue I suppose. You need all these guards to ferry you around?"_

"_No, those are you for," Laguna replied._

_Seifer stood on the pier, a semi-circle of armed rifles pointed at the man, and still, _and still_ the cocky grin didn't leave his face. Didn't so much as twitch as a dozen Esthar soldiers with hair-trigger fingers and very clear memories of the Galbadian invasion of their city pointed guns at his heart._

"_And to what do I owe the honour? Are you here to clap me in irons?"_

_Laguna shrugged and made his pitch. "No, I'm here to offer you a job."_

_He noticed with no small amount of glee the ever-so-slight confusion on the other man's face. Seifer just stood looking at the two Esthar politicians, ignoring the soldiers as if they didn't exist even though every small movement of his body made laser-sights dance across his torso. Finally whatever reply he was thinking up seemed to be complete, and he spoke. "Maybe you don't know my previous employment history. It's a little spotty for your shiny perfect city."_

"_No, it's just about right."_

_Kiros' men had tracked the man down as he ran across the world, from Balamb across half the continent. Sometimes they'd come within inches of catching up only to be blocked by a missed connection or a broken lock, until eventually Laguna had lost his patience and simply posted Esthar guards everywhere he could. Finally there had been only one place left, and Kiros had been waiting when Seifer's boat sailed into Fisherman's Horizon._

"_I don't think there's a number that exists for how many years we could lock you up for. Certainly long enough for you never see sunlight until they carted your body out of the prison on a morgue trolly. Assuming we even bother with that. I hear the new duchess in Dollet hasn't got any scruples about the death penalty, and she's _really_ not too happy about what the Galbadian Army did to her father. I bet she'd like to see you again."_

"_So what, you're going to offer me a once-in-a-lifetime job as a janitor in the Pandora? Sweeping lunar dust off your little base?"_

"_No, I had something different in mind. Ms Satomi?" Laguna noticed with relish as finally the arrogant cocksure surface cracked just a little bit, as the tall albino woman stepped forward from the vehicle she had arrived in._

"_Fujin."_

"_Seifer."_

"_They roped you into this little hunting party huh?"_

_The woman's words were softer than whispers but somehow they got through to the man. "I went to him first."_

_Seifer smiled, and when he did so there was something amused and maybe even gentle in it. "Yeah, I thought you would have. Guess that means that big lunk is in on this whole thing to?"_

_Fujin looked around at the pier, and finally back at Seifer, and as she spoke she cut through the bravado and the threats instantly. "We all wanted to make a difference. President Loire is offering the chance. If we have to make that difference in chains then it's nothing except what we deserve."_

"_I didn't care about making a difference, I just wanted to be a hero Fu."_

_A shrug. "So come with us and give it a real shot."_

* * *

><p>"Almasy will pull through for us." Kiros said, as if reading his boss's thoughts. <em>Not like he has a choice<em>, he didn't say out loud.

Laguna was surprised at the man. "He's an arrogant, cocksure sonofabitch."

"That's why he'll get it done."

Laguna sighed. He'd adjusted as fast and as well as he could from being the leader of a three-man squad of soldiers, to the leader of a small localised rebellion, to the leader of a hundreds-strong serious resistance, to _president of Esthar_, but sometimes he still looked at the institution that surrounded him and wondered how he'd lasted through four elections and a minor rebellion. "Why aren't our jobs switched around old friend?"

"Because I'd have locked up the Sorceress Cultists, thrown Almasy into the brig until he died and taken Galbadia apart until Deling was a hollow ruin." Kiros shook his head. "You're a better man me Laguna. That's why you sit in the big chair and I stand behind it."

"Just so long as you've not got a dagger in your hand back there. I think I preferred it when it was ten ex-prisoners working out of a shack in the desert." Some days he looked out of that giant ceiling-high window and envied SeeD, sometimes wished the organisation had been around when he had been younger. He'd have walked through fire to have joined.

_And then where would we be? Esthar still in Adel's grip and isolated behind layers of shields and holograms? A Galbadia with an iron-grip on half the world? Best not start regretting your life now Loire or you'll never stop._

The last words came upon him so suddenly it felt like a hand had enclosed on his chest as he remembered the woman who had said them. He turned away from Kiros before the man could see his face change and managed to get out a short _that will be all _to the other man. Kiros just turned and left, and Laguna had no idea the man already knew why he was being sent out. His hand went to the ring still on his finger, and all the old regrets came flooding back. Far too late to do anything about them now, but still he could feel the grip around his heart like ice.

_I should do something about it. I have a right to know._

His own voice came back at him. _You had years and did nothing. They must have their own life out there by now. You _gave up_ that right when you did nothing._

And Ellone's words spoken at Raine's graveside, all those years ago as the flowers had spun through the air on the Winhill morning.

_You have a son, dad._

Luckily he didn't have time for the cold thoughts to settle on him, as without even a perfunctory chime the door to the presidential office slid open again and Kiros walked back in with thunderclouds on his face.

"Trouble."

Pretty soon Laguna was sharing them.

* * *

><p>"Has she lost her <em>mind?<em>"

Kiros had to almost jog to keep up with his boss, as Laguna strode down the halls towards the landing pad. Sometimes he saw his job less of advising and steering Laguna Loire the President of Esthar into safe waters, and more of keeping Laguna Loire the Impulsive Jackass out of trouble. He was going to need some major anchors to keep him on the ground now. "I don't like it anymore than you do but legally she's within her-"

Laguna threw the door open with such violence that the guards on the other side were almost going for their pistols before they recognised their leader. "Bullshit! I swear that sea air must breed madmen or something. At least her father was a crazy pacifist and not a crazy warmonger. _Doctor!"_

The small figure of Doctor Odine turned as Laguna's voice echoed through the lab, his ruffled and feathered clothing turning a second or so after to catch up. "Mr President?" The man's voice, with its accent and mannerisms that in unfortunate circumstances could make him sound like a particularly obnoxious bee, was thankfully somewhat quiet as he saw how angry his president was.

"Fuel the Ragnarok."

That shocked Kiros enough to make him speak. _"Laguna!" _

Laguna Loire spun around to face his most trusted advisor and oldest comrade. "I've had it up to here with that woman Kiros. I made clear to her after the Second War that Galbadia wasn't going to be some corpse to be picked apart by vultures looking for payback, and she shoots it up first chance she gets! We let them off with a warning and now she's kidnapping my friends and thinking up some grand dream of empire! I won't stand for it!"

"So you're going to roll on over there in the Ragnarok and what, start blowing things up until they surrender?"

"Damn right I am!" _Esthar doesn't leave its friends in the lurch while I'm in command. Not now, not ever._

Kiros sighed. He loved the man like a brother and knew that Laguna would walk through fire if there was a man in need on the other side, but sometimes it was just so _frustrating._ "You're not just one man anymore Loire. You're the president of a nation."

"_So?"_

"So act like it."

Laguna had calmed down sufficiently for the words to get through his anger. "You want me to do nothing," he said with an eerie calm.

"I want you to keep the world on an even keel. We've spent years getting Galbadia back up to something approaching a nation where you can walk the streets without being mugged or worse, you want to throw all that away over something like this?"

"So we sit and watch."

"We sit and watch."

Laguna fumed. "This is really just beyond the pale, buddy."

"Is this some quaint Galbadian saying I've forgotten?"

"We shouldn't have to stand for shit like this."

Kiros shrugged again, this time with some relief as Laguna found the nearest chair and sat on it, ignoring a squawk from Odine. "We have bigger problems, but if you like we can send someone to keep an eye on things." The shrug turned into a grin. "In fact I know the perfect man."

* * *

><p>"Seriously? <em>Seriously?"<em>

The look of utter confusion and shock on Zell's face as he turned away from the controls made Nida sit up and take notice. "What? What happened?" He listened as the younger man relayed what Kiros had just told him, and the expression on his face changed from surprise to shock to not a little anger as Zell finished talking. "This isn't some kind of joke right? I know I don't get out of here much but-" He stopped. The door was already sliding shut as Zell practically sprinted out of the cockpit and into the elevator. He barely caught him as the doors slid open. "Hey, _hey! _Where are you going?"

"Dollet."

Nida grabbed the elevator door as it closed. "_Wait_. You can't just charge on over there."

"Watch me."

_Hyne save me from field agents. _Nida sighed. "Calm down for a sec or you'll end up stuck in goal just like the boss." He blinked. "What do you think you're going to do? Single-handedly invade Dollet?"

Zell tried to pace but the elevator wasn't big enough, and he settled for merely bouncing on the hell of his toes. "Then what am I supposed to _do_ man?"

"You need to think through this rationally. We're SeeD, not some thugs in uniform." Nida said patiently. "Laguna wants you hunting down sorceress cultists. Fine, do that. Now, _where have we seen sorceress cultists lately?_"

Zell just stared at the other man for a second before realisation dawned, and a smile spread across his face. "Why, Dollet."

"Exactly. And _Laguna_ put you on this mission. I imagine he'd be pretty angry if someone got in your way."

Zell almost laughed at how perfect it was. The duchess may have been crazy enough to lock up a major figure from a technically-neutral mercenary organisation almost universally known and loved, but no way – _no way –_ was she crazy enough to lock up one working under direct orders from the president of Esthar. With Galbadia's military ruined Dollet might have had the biggest teeth on the block, but there was one dog in the field that not even they would dare mess with. Just because Esthar's teeth weren't seen often didn't mean they were sharp as diamond.

Nida squeezed past the doors into the elevator and they clanged shut in objection as he finally let go.

"The hell are you doing?" Zell asked in amazement, forgetting for a moment that the other man was his superior officer.

"What, you didn't think I'm going to let you wander into a delicate situation like this all on your own did you? This is going to require finesse." Nida grinned as the elevator descended. "Last I checked your idea of negotiations is fifty-percent fists and fifty-percent boots."

Nida couldn't resist a grin as the elevator _ping_ed to a stop and the doors slid open to reveal the concourse beneath them, with the long path to the outside stretched out before them.

"Just leave the talking to me."


	11. Gaslamp Reunion

He gently shook her by the shoulder as the jeep finally crested and the lights of Deling City blazed on the plains below them. The gas-powered lamps of the industrial districts blazed into the sky, and in the darkness they looked like geometrically-arranged fireflies, caught in some bizarre cubist spider-web. Here and there he could see patches of the web where no light shined, or where the hot orange glow gave way to cool blue and white lines as Esthar's technology gave light to the areas of the city that Dollet's guns had rained destruction on. Even from this distance and at this time of night he could see and hear the headlights of Galbadian APCs as they patrolled the perimeters of the city to proclaim that Galbadian soldiers still defended Galbadian territory. The provisional government had proclaimed it as a return to form, but to Squall it looked more like a beaten man throwing away his friend's help and insisting he could walk upright on his own. There were not many patrols.

"Mmmm?" Rinoa looked with bleary eyes through the windscreen and saw the city before her. The noise she made as sat up and adjusted her clothes was something between annoyance and disgust. Whether at her own condition after three days and two night's hard travel or at the capital city of the nation she had hated for so long he wasn't sure. "Oh. Well, here we are," she said numbly. He didn't blame her for the empty observation. Even with frequent changes of driver all three of them were running on empty.

As soon as they had been escorted gently from the throne-room (_and couldn't you feel eyes on the back of your neck like daggers as you went Squall?)_ they had left the city, flat-out buying the jeep they were travelling in rather than test their luck against the Duchess' changing moods by haggling, and wondering at every pair of eyes that had turned to follow them whether the looks were awestruck, curious or something more malevolent. They'd given a single message to the cadet manning the SeeD boat that had taken them to Dollet and then headed out as soon as humanely possible. Now tired beyond words even Deling came as a relief after the endless quiet of the countryside. He came as close as he dared to the city and waited for the nearest guard to notice them in the dark. Luck, for once, was with him.

"Commander Leonhart. Miss Tyynes." Not a question. The Estharian soldier's professionalism and competency radiated out of him like a rock, and for a moment Squall felt just a little small before the man. He looked old enough to have grown up before the First War, caught and tainted with the sheen of quiet desperation which most of the older troops Estharians seemed to be infested with. Decades of living under a brutal repressive sorceress-dictator with literally no escape from their continent had left a generation stilted and introverted. For all the awe and envy the rest of the world gave to Esthar Squall knew that the technological utopia had scars that might never be healed. The old soldier before him talking gently into his lapel-mike might have seen things that would have turned Squall's blood to water. He turned back to the SeeDs. "Ms Satomi is already on the way sir. Is there anything I can do for you commander, your grace?"

Squall waved a hand and shook his head, not a little embarrassed at the deference from someone easily twice his age with double his experience. "No, thank you. Carry on, we'll wait." The man nodded and turned away, and he heard the small laugh from beside him.

"'Carry on soldier'. The brave commander addresses his troops."

He felt a blush rising up and stamped it down before it could emerge on his skin, and he really hoped that hadn't been a chuckle that had escaped Xu's lips. "Well what was I supposed to say?"

Rinoa leant her head against his shoulder. "Must get a little light-headed, what with being on that pedestal all the time."

He smiled in the darkness, the only light coming from the bright checkpoint lights shining on the jeep. "You keep me grounded Rin."

"Your pillow-talk is great but you mix metaphors badly," she said, quietly enough that Xu didn't hear over the steady hum of the engine.

"Well-"

"Wait. Look."

They watched together as the figure almost coalesced out of the darkness. Rinoa heard the small intake of breath from Squall and her hand found his on the wheel. For all the years they had been together, first as travelling companions, then as true comrades, fiancés, finally husband-and-wife, she had learned all of his habits, foibles. What made him tick and what made him tense up angry as hell. She had smoothed his rough edges and broken through his shell, but for all that she knew there was something primal and instinctive about _this_ subject that would forever be beyond her control to help change.

A literal whisper in the dark as the woman spoke. "Commanders. Ms Hear- Ms Leonhart. Welcome to Deling."

Squall's reply was said through gritted teeth. "Fujin."

* * *

><p>"You've done good work," Xu said, staring out of the window and into the night.<p>

Fujin shrugged, unwilling to take the credit, as they rolled through the city. They had left behind the tiny Dollet vehicle for something more befitting their stature. That, and…

_We didn't think it would be a good idea for you to travel to light inside the city,_ Fujin had said, and now as they went through Deling in the armoured personnel carrier he believed it. When it had came to a halt beside them at the city checkpoint Rinoa had at first mistaken it for a patrol leaving the city, so heavily armoured it was. It was only when Fujin had gestured inside that she had realised that it was for them. Even plushly-decorated and as smooth a ride as anything she'd ever sat in, it seemed massive overkill for taking four people less than three miles, and she wondered why the pale woman had looked so nervous as they had climbed out of their jeep and switched.

She tried to make conversation as Squall stared out of the thick window. Whether he was still angry enough to let it affect his judgement or simply anticipating and dreading the meeting ahead made no practical difference. She'd broken his shell but some of the pieces still remained, and he had withdrawn behind one. She'd force him out of later, but for now she knew she'd only cut herself on the edges of his anger if she tried. "You heard about Dollet?"

Fujin nodded. "I'm sorry Ms Leonhart but-"

"Call me Rinoa," she said forcefully. She would have swore the other woman blushed.

"Thank you…Rinoa. I wish there was something I could do to help but I fear our position has not endeared us to the duchess."

"What about the murders?" Squall almost barked the word out and Fujin jumped in her seat as she struggled to reply. To Rinoa the scene was surreal and disheartening, watching her husband throwing verbal barbs at his subordinate. Xu's eyes narrowed slightly but she wouldn't chide her own commander in front of others.

Fujin coughed. "I think that would be better discussed later when we-"

He didn't even look at her as he replied. "I'd _like_ to discuss it now."

Fujin sighed and glanced at Xu, who nodded at her. Fujin bowed to her request and began.

"Five SeeDs murdered in Deling City over the past two months. I told that to Ms Trepe and Ms Tyynes. We're now prepared to change that to ten, over three months.

Squall's head whipped around as he forgot his antipathy towards Fujin, and stared at with something between amazement and frank disbelief. "_Ten?"_

She forged on, as if the words would act as a shield against his oncoming questions. "When we first realised our men were being targeted we went back over all deaths in Deling City involving SeeDs who died in…circumstances other than the line of duty. Asked around and ran tests we didn't before."

Squall nodded, he didn't have to ask for an explanation. _Drunken bar brawls, unlucky accidents on construction sites, illness. Unfortunate losses that wouldn't possibly be seen as murders. _"And you found five more."

Fujin nodded. "All in Deling, all definitely homicides."

"Why did you need Quistis and Xu here to help?"

If it had been anyone else in the APC with the woman they would have missed it. But Squall Leonhart was a superbly-trained soldier and Rinoa Leonhart _nee_ Heartilly had spent her childhood around conniving and plotting politicians. Both of them caught the lightning-fast glance as Fujin's eyes went to Xu and then Rinoa, and neither needed any time to translate it.

Squall's mouth started working first. "You're kidding. Sorceress Cultists have been murdering Galbadian SeeDs in Deling City?" It was his turn to shoot an accusing glance at Xu, who had the good grace to look embarrassed at keeping it from him.

A pained expression crossed Fujin's face, and this time they watched as she squirmed under their gaze. "Not just Galbadian." She held up a hand as the car came to a stop, and the couple blinked as they realised how distracted they had been by her words. "Come inside and they can explain more."

"Who?"

Both Squall and Rinoa looked on, a little puzzled, as a small smile broke out on Fujin's normally stoic face. "You'll never guess."

* * *

><p>Even in the middle of the harshest reality, Fujin wondered as she watched the reunion, there must be some human impulse that looks for the smallest ray of hope and magnifies it into a sun. Even with her own…tenuous…position amongst the gathered group she couldn't help but feel cheer.<p>

The ancient oaken double-doors swung open to reveal the dining room of the Deling Mansion, now converted into the headquarters of the reconstruction effort. Papers laid strewn everywhere and Rinoa took in the old room she had spent her childhood wandering in and out of, and thought that finally it was being used for a significant purpose. Heads turned as she and Squall entered the room. She saw Raijin looking up, their entrance some break from the boredom he was obviously experiencing indoors. Nameless Estharian and Galbadian uniforms stood or sat around the room, obviously waiting for something to begin. The man who's face had once haunted her dreams, then nightmares, and finally nothing at all sat to the right of the head of the table. He must have heard them enter but Seifer Almasy remained engrossed in whatever he was reading. And finally the last two occupants who turned to look at their entrance-

"No way."

She gaped for a second before the man swept her off the floor and into a massive bear-hug, and Irvine Kinneas grinned as he put her back down again. "Oof, you're heavy." He grinned and adjusted the brim of his hat. "How you holdin' up Rin."

"It's been too long!" Selphie's hug was less bone-crushing but much more welcome.

"What the hell are you guys doing here?" Rinoa could hear the genuine pleasure in Squall's voice and it made her heart sing as the two men shook hands and embraced.

"Heard you guys had some trouble down here. We talked with the lady here" – he nodded in Fujin's direction, who nodded back solemnly – "and thought you might want a hand."

"It's just good to see you too." Squall stepped back and looked at the pair. "Dressed for the occasion too?"

A lot had changed since the end of the war almost half a decade ago. Just as he and Rinoa had discarded their old clothes – practically uniforms really, the sheer amount of time they had sometimes had to go without access to anything resembling civilisation – as their own whims and experiences had taken them farther and farther away from their teenage years. But even the old Selphie and Irvine probably wouldn't have recognised the new. Irvine had tried as much as he could to stay ever the cowboy archetype, simply switching the material of his clothing from fair-weather leathers to something warmer Squall couldn't identify, and Selphie had swapped her summer dress for a buttoned-up cotton jacket and greatcoat, the latter now open in the warm Galbadian climate. Both were in cool blues and whites, with their SeeD emblems pinned to the lapels.

Irvine shrugged and grinned. "When you talk about Trabia you don't talk about summer weather and winter weather, you talk about winter weather and frozen wasteland weather." The tall Galbadian glanced around the room. "What do you think about this whole mess?"

Squall shrugged. "It sounds pretty serious. You came down from T-Garden?"

"Laguna ferried us across in a borrowed airship, about the time you guys were getting kicked out of Dollet I guess. Or not getting kicked out, as the case may be."

"You heard about that huh?"

"I swear it's the seaside air that drives them all crazy. Martine used to scream bloody murder about her father back when he was headmaster and he was the duke." Irvine looked across at Xu. "We'll get her out, depend on it."

"I believe you," she replied.

"Thanks." Squall grinned. It really _was_ good to see them again. It had been too long since the last time they had all gotten together. He and Rinoa at Balamb Garden making sure cadets were trained and the work taken care of while Quistis and Xu made sure the world kept spinning on it's axis. Zell spent more time travelling than he did with his feet on the ground, and finally Selphie and Irvine in Trabia Garden, keeping the organisation functioning and working with Esthar in the east.

_We spend so much time apart. We should _make_ a reunion happen._

_Just one more thing to add to the list._

Unconsciously his hand went to the pocket of his jacket, the small piece of paper with the name written on it that Xu had handed over after they had been safely away from Dollet. Idly he reached down to bring it out and see what was written there, but it never reached his hand as his thought process was suddenly de-railed by a single sound.

The looks ranged from outright hostility to cool calculating appraisal as Seifer Almasy knocked gently on the table. Silence reigned as for a moment the new arrivals tried to sort through their feelings and come to terms with the presence amongst them they had until now been trying to ignore.

He saved them the trouble.

"All this is very sweet but we have actual problems to solve here," Seifer said as he watched the reunion scene playing out in front of him.

Squall sat down at the opposite end of the table and stared down its length as Fujin sat at the head of the other end. He very pointedly did not look directly at the other man. "Report in then, by all means," he said, his tone sounding every bit as bored as Seifer's, and the blonde man bridled at the insult. Mercifully he held his tongue.

"Ten dead SeeDs in the city. One of them the property-"

"The friend," Selphie interjected icily.

"-of our Trabian guests." Seifer spread out pictures on the table, a record of smashed and broken bodies hauled up out of sewers, picked from disposal sites and found lifeless in back alleys. "Attacks on SeeD and Esthar personnel in the city, and _this_." This last image he slid directly across the table, but not to Squall.

Rinoa picked up the paper distastefully, then gasped and almost dropped it as she realised what was pictured there.

"So we have two problems?" Squall asked as he looked over Rinoa's shoulder at the crude depictions of eyes and wings spray-painted onto some anonymous brick wall. "There's a SeeD-killer on the loose in Deling, and there's a Sorceress Cult active in Galbadia."

"They're the same problem," Fujin said softly. In the quiet air of the mansion she didn't need to shout to be heard. She raised a hand and ticked off her fingers as she talked. "Deling. Dollet. Centra-

"Centra?" Squall asked, before the knowledge floated out of his brain. "Zell."

Xu looked thoughtful. "Cultists active on three of the four continents. Maybe more…?" She glanced around at Selphie, who shook her head emphatically.

"None in Trabia."

Raijin looked unconvinced. "It's a big country y'know ma'am. Rocky too. You _sure_ you-"

"I'd know," Selphie said quietly.

"I'm just sayin' it's not like-"

"I would have been told," she repeated, for a second the usual bubbly upbeat personality sloughing off her frame to show the edge that a person developed when they grew up in the harshest country in the world. Trabia was a nation of villages. A collection of tiny enclaves of humanity surrounded by snow and ice for ten months of the year that were- _had to be – _always in contact with the others to survive the endless winters of the continent, like a group of people balancing on a frail rope bridge over a black abyss. Anyone living in that country would view a threat to their tenuous survival as beyond hope. T-Garden and its graduates were less of an eastern military force and more like a collection of men and women that policed the continent and kept humanity alive on the bleak land, its justice known as unavoidable and utterly certain and its requests treated as sacrosanct. From inside the walls of the academy Selphie Tilmitt ruled Trabia.

"So you're talking about three quarters of the world overran with-"

One of the nameless men spoke up. "I don't really think 'overran' is the word to describe unconnected groups of fanatics commander. I wouldn't call them organised."

Seifer cut the man off at the knees. "If they're walking free and attacking our- attacking _SeeD_ personnel then they're organised enough." "Don't underestimate these people kid. They're crazy as hell and they don't give a damn about anything but their warped religion." He glanced across at Rinoa, and Squall felt the urge to step between them as the man's eyes looked on his wife. "Whatever form that takes at the minute."

Fujin coughed and nodded. "They attacked Mr and Mrs Leonhart in broad daylight. Luckily they failed, mainly die to Mrs Leonhart's…extensive…defensive measures. None were captured and nobody even realised they were there until the attack had started. Combined with the focus on killing our personnel I'd say that's more like a military operation than a religious group."

"Aimsland."

Seifer frowned. "That's a word that sounds familiar."

The luckless man who suddenly found himself the centre of the room's attention stepped forward. "Mr Dincht's report mentioned the name in the context of-"

He rambled on until Squall picked meaning from the deluge of bureaucratic words. "He's their leader." _Finally, a name._ He had taken to the global stage as well as he could, Quistis and Rinoa helping to drag him out of the small-scale picture he had always seen the world in. While he had adjusted as well as he could, Squall Leonhart sometimes longed for the relative simplicity of the small picture. One man he co0uld track down was small enough.

_Now it will cost you, Leonhart. Find us when you're ready to pay. We'll be watching._

_We'll be watching._

"I might know something."

They listened as Squall told them what the man had said. He could feel Rinoa's eyes on him as he spoke and knew that there would be an argument later, but for now all he could think of was getting to the bottom of the problem, reaching past the anonymous cultists and to the man behind the scenes.

Seifer snorted and Squall bridled at the sound. "So your plan is to what, wander around shouting for cultists 'till one of them decides to Take You To Their Leader?"

"Do you have another?"

"Not yet."

Xu spared a quick look at Rinoa, who rolled her eyes. She stalled the argument before it bloomed by placing herself between the two men. If she felt a chill as her body broke the sullen eye contact between them she had to be imagining it. "We have another problem. Quis- Headmistress Trepe is being held unlawfully by-"

"That's not a problem." Seifer said bluntly.

Xu almost hissed her reply. _"I disagree."_

The blonde man snorted in amusement. "Have you ever caged a falcon?" Xu shook her head. "The duchess just did, and she'll start regretting it soon enough. I'll be shocked – _shocked_ – if the instructor doesn't find her way out of that mess in under a week." He stood. "I'm done here. Do whatever you feel like you need to, _commander_. I'll use my own methods in the meantime."

"And those are?" Irvine asked after the blonde swordsman had stalked out of the room.

"Beating people over the head mainly," Raijin muttered.

Rinoa leaned into him and whispered into his ear, her breath warm against his skin. "Squall, can we talk?"

* * *

><p>"Don't do it."<p>

"Rin…"

Rinoa paced in front of him as they stood outside of the mansion. The sun had begun to rise but not far enough to pierce through the smog of the city, even as high above the rest of the city as the mansion was. "You've got some stupid idea about going off on your own to solve the whole problem."

_We know a lot about you, knight._

"Yeah, I do." He didn't deny it.

"Then you're taking me with you." She held a hand against his lips to stall his objection. "I heard what that man said. You think he knows something about you. Well he sure as hell knows something about _me_." She held out a hand to his face. "I want to know more about this power Squall. It's a part of me, something I inherited. I wanted you to find your own past? Now I want to find my own future."

He took the hand she offered and smiled. He couldn't resist. Never had been able to.

"So let's do it together."


	12. Roses and Glass

Quistis Trepe sat in the old royal garden, surrounded by a thousand blooming roses and the sun beating down on her face, and wondered how much longer her patience and sanity would hold out.

At first she had stayed in the room she had shared with Xu on their arrival, but eventually cabin fever had driven her outwards into the halls of the Dollet ducal palace. She walked the halls and looked out of the huge glass windows onto the city below, the people walking the seaside streets and going on with their lives as sorceress cultists walked among them and their leader stewed in her own hate. With the exception of those who guarded her, the servants and soldiers refused to talk to her or even acknowledge her presence. They looked away or stood at a statue-like attention as she spoke at them and eventually she had simply stopped trying, contenting herself with her own company rather than try to squeeze blood from a stone. Her name and captive status went before her like a repelling shield she couldn't escape, and she travelled the halls of the massive building like a ghost, her feet beating a path between her room, the interior gardens and the dining hall. Days turned into weeks and before she realised it her walk through the halls had become a habit, her routine a normal thing rather than an unnatural confinement, and she found herself slipping away from the outside world as the richly-decorated walls and silent servants of the duchess' palace became all she had, the books in the ancient library the only exercise for her mind and the occasional tame cat or hound the only living creatures that would approach her.

She sighed in frustration and leaned back, eyes closed, letting the sun play over her face. She had thrown her SeeD uniform off after the first week, after she had woken one morning to find a red summer dress laid gently on the back of the room's single chair. She had ignored the fact that someone had snuck into her room in the night and gratefully switched from the hot and stifling uniform to the airy fabric and for a moment as she viewed herself in the mirror, for once looking like a normal person and not the physical embodiment of SeeD, and could have almost forgiven the duchess, until she realised that even with golden bars and gourmet food a cage is still a cage.

Like her feet on the rich carpets of the mansion she found her thoughts wandering in circles that turned into deep ruts as again and again they intruded on her and demanded that she worry about that, even as she could do nothing to silence their questions. Her communicator had been taken away and her single attempt to slip through the castle up to its antennae array had been cut short by the pitying smile of Leonard Nerva as he bared her way. He was the only human within a hundred square miles who so much as looked her in the eye, appearing like smoke when she strayed too close to some forbidden wing or doorway to guide her away, and apart from distant servants talking amongst themselves that grew silent as she approached, his was the only voice she heard. His partner remained ever unsmiling and silent. Still, none of his words contained answers to her questions.

_Did Squall and Rinoa reach Deling City okay_?

_Was Xu already at G-garden bringing the Galbadian leaders to heel?_

_What was Laguna's plans for the spread of the cultists? _

And finally another that slipped through the rest like a shark, coming up when she least expected it and whispering a name into her thoughts.

_Aimsland._

Her routine had taken her into the rose gardens again, and it there she sat reading some ancient book she barely bothered to remember the title of – words to keep her mind active and nothing else – when the quiet and inhumanly perfect elegance of the palace grounds were interrupted for the first time, as somewhere in the bushes ahead of her a child laughed.

For a moment she kept reading, her mind unable to parse the sounds that it had heard, until finally it forced its way through the dust that had been gathering over mind and Quistis looked up in surprise as the girlish laughter sounded through the garden, and before she could tell herself to pause and wait she was up from the bench, her book discarded, and walking through the garden in search of its origin. Even within the cavernous and confusing layout of the rose gardens she did not have to search for long.

The girl and the boy were playing on the spacious lawn at the centre of the garden, surrounded by rose bushes that covered the area on all sides. The smooth wooden square at the centre of the lawn must have been used for ceremonial purposes but it was empty as the children ran and laughed across it, their feet slapping against the pristine surface. She hung back and watched as he boy swung an imaginary wooden pole around himself, making metallic noises as the girl clung to his leg and laughed as he defeated the imaginary enemies surrounding him. Neither could have been older than a dozen years, and to Quistis who had spent the last three weeks surrounded by nothing but walls and roses they both looked heartbreakingly cute.

"Who're you?"

Her skin crawled and she spun around as the voice came from behind, her hand already reaching down for a weapon that wasn't there. As her brain caught up to her reactions she realised it wasn't necessary, as the teenage boy looking at her in puzzlement was obviously no kind of soldier. She coughed to disguise her shaky hands and straightened her dress. "I'm-"

She never got a chance to finish, as the man – the _boy_ cut her off. "Servants aren't supposed to be here. You should leave before my bodyguard comes back."

"I'm not a servant." She cursed herself as the words came out too fast. She felt light-headed as she stood there by the bushes, talking to this young man who stood looking at her as though he was the lord of the castle and she were just a serving-woman. _Not a little bit of panic there Quistis?_ "I'm a guest of the duchess." While grossly false there was no way she was going to admit to the boy that she was a prisoner in the palace.

"Sorry, the dress confused me." He turned as behind him the children went on with their game and Quistis watched. His entire demeanour marked him as one of Dollet's old families. The easy confidence and poise spoke of a life free of worry and of total confidence in its status. She felt a stab of annoyance (_admit it girl you're a little jealous)_ go through her and dismissed it for the unworthy impulse it was as he turned back. "We're guests too. Auntie said we should come and stay while bad stuff happened outside."

It took her a second before her memory filled in the blanks, half-remembered pieces of information falling into place from endless briefings and reports as she had tried to memorise the names and faces of the new circles she travelled in. "You're the duchess' nephew?" She knew hardly anything about the Nuo family, the duchess her only contact with the old Dollet rulers. These three must have been from the Galbadian branch of the family. Small wonder they'd come back to Dollet with tensions so high between the two city-states.

"Yes." He turned again and shouted, the two children turning at his voice and dropping their game to run over. "I'm Alec, this is Caty and Jon."

The two children could have been young doppelgangers for the duchess. The same black straight hair and thin faces. But where time and loss had twisted the Duchess into a pale shadow of a person the two kids were still bright and alive. The boy smiled up at her as the girl hid behind Alec's legs. "Hiya!"

Quistis smiled. "Nice to meet you. What're you playing out here?" As if she didn't know the answer.

The boy beamed and held up the small branch he had been waving around. "Knights and Sorceresses!"

_Of course, what else?_ Throughout the world you'd still find small children playing Knights and Sorceresses wherever you found a boy and a girl together, and some unlucky third kid to be The Bad Guy that the knight would beat down as the sorceress watched on. It felt strangely sad and at the same time uplifting watching them. She _knew_ a real Sorceress and her knight, and she had seen what that pairing could become if the worst happened. Two sides of the same coin. "Are you a good sorceress or a bad one?"

The girl _harrumphed_ and put her hands on her hips. The gesture reminded her of Selphie. "All sorceresses are good!" She slapped the boy around the ears. "And my knight is the _best!"_

Quistis and Alec laughed. "Good for you. A good sorceress always needs her knight." _Always._

"Who're you lady? I like your dress," the girl said, tugging at the hem. Her older brother shooed her away.

"I'm…" For a moment she debated lying, making up some lie to avoid the hassle, but then decided simply, _what the hell_. "Call me Quisty." She heard the sharp indrawn breath from beside her as the small girl gave her a calculating look and nodded.

"That's a pretty name."

Alec coughed and waved the two children away. "Go get ready for dinner kids, I'll come back in a minute." He ignored the protests and sad looks he got. "_Go_ alright? I'll get you an ice-cream or something if you're quiet."

The two watched as the two children cheerfully ran off into the mansion. "They're nice kids," Quistis said carefully, wondering what was running through the young man's mind. When she finally turned to look at him she had to try hard to stop herself from laughing. The boy had turned beet-red.

"I…I didn't realise you were…umm, I mean…I'm sorry I didn't-"

She smiled and cut him off. "That's alright." She ran a hand down her dress. "I'm not usually pictured wearing this kind of outfit."

If anything the boy turned redder. "I didn't mean anything by it Ms Trepe."

She waved it away as she sat on the bench vacated by the noisy youngsters. "Don't worry about it. I'm off duty right now." He didn't move to sit, and she cursed inwardly as all the signs presented themselves. After the Second War had ended and the world had returned to normalcy Balamb Garden, SeeD, and the entire organisation had gained near-instant mythological status. None of them had escaped the attention, and especially not the Orphanage Gang, six brave young heroes who had journeyed across the world, freed a nation from the grip of an evil tyrant, and travelled to the end of time to save the planet. Never mind that half the journey the brave young heroes had been miserable from cold, spending half the war running from one place to the next and surviving by the skin of their teeth. The truth of the conflict had been boiled down into extremes and absolutes; the cruel and merciless sorceress trying to destroy the world versus the proud and heroic men and women trying to stop her, with the other nation-states of the world being given different allegiances depending who was telling the tale. Just as the bloody and pyrrhic war had been changed into a bedtime story so too had people been stripped of their hopes and dreams, wishes and aspirations and transformed unwillingly into caricatures as their most easily-seen traits became their new selves. The cheerful young maiden and her cool gunman, the young martial artists with fists as fast as lightning, the beautiful ice-queen that guided their steps, the evil traitor that sold a nation to the vile sorceress, and finally the young angel and her brave knight. All united as they struggled across the world and fell in love.

She could hear his next question even as it left his lips. "What was it _like_?" he asked, his confidence suddenly gone as he found himself in front of one of the legendary heroes. For a moment she was tempted to tell him what it was really like, but thought better of it. The boy didn't want to hear about the nights spent hiding in forests as Galbadians or monsters passed by inches from their hiding places, or the cuts and scars and shaking relief after one too many close calls, or the looks on the faces of those they had cut down as they died. He wanted to hear about brave battles against evil mages and strange and exotic locations. An amazing journey to the moon and magical creatures that could be called up in battle and spit lightning from their fingers. He wanted a dream, and these days all Quistis could provide was the reality. The young nobleman's imagination could fool himself into thinking of it all as a grand adventure, and her own had long since lost the capacity. Zell had told them they would all look back on it and laugh, but for her that laughter had never arrived.

_But were you any different when you were his age._

_At his age I was already a SeeD, I didn't _need_ to imagine. _

"It was…an experience."

"And you really met the archan…Ultimecia?" The boy's voice was so quiet in his awe at meeting a for-real _hero_ that he was almost whispering. "What was she like?"

It pulled her up short. She had been expecting the usual questions: _what was the Battle of the Gardens like? Is Esthar as amazing as everyone says? What was it like in space? What's it like in the future? What is was _like? She paused as she thought of an answer, this small child before her, barely younger than she had been when she had been thrust into a global conflict that had taken her to worlds and beyond, to the end of the time itself to face a being so powerful she had pulled the past to her like a child would pull a toy car on the end of a string. She thought back on those memories, of the ancient cold castle filled with bitterness and hatred and the sadness of the last living thing in a dead world. "She was cold. Cold and empty."

The boy managed to get the stars out of his eyes for long enough to remember that even if he was considerably younger than one of his idols, she was in _his_ house. Or close enough. "Umm…is there anything I can do while you're staying here? We could show you around the city. Dollet is…errr."

Quistis spared the young man any more embarrassment and cut him off as gently as she could. "I'd love to, I know how good Dollet hospitality can be. Unfortunately I'm not able to leave the mansion for a while." She gave him her most winning smile as she wondered on how silly the situation must look to anyone watching: A young noble of an ancient house, trying to be courteous and at the same time commanding towards a mere common commander of soldiers. _My life's changed in many ways since taking this job._ She opened her mouth to let him down gently when she saw the expression on his face change from nervous admiration to something more approaching terror.

"The trouble in the city! That was _you?"_ The boy took two steps away from her and she resisted the urge to close the gap again. "_You're_ the one she's keeping here!"

She knew his meaning instantly. "That was a horrible accident. I'm sorry it had to happen. We were just defending ourselves." _Sorcery._ The dreaded power that had crushed the world into a single stretch of time, the loosening of which had broken minds during its Aftermath. Feared and sometimes hated by the world that barely understood the basic para-magic of SeeD and only knew of its power through three cruel tyrants and a single innocent woman. Three-to-one wasn't good odds for acceptance. "I'm here to try and make up for it."

From the look on the boy's face he knew well the sort of atonement she meant. "Aunt- the duchess isn't a bad person." He leaned back closer to her and she breathed an inward sigh of relief that paranoia didn't seem to run too deeply in the family. "She gets scared sometimes, that's all. She brought all the family back here, where we can't get in trouble."

_Funny way of showing fear, locking people up_. "Of course." Something had been niggling at the back of her mind since she had started talking with the young man and now as the laughter and footsteps of the young man's two siblings returned she realised what it was. "Alec?"

"Hmmm?"

"You called Ultimecia the archangel?"

Alec blushed a little bit. "Sorry. I…er…it's just something I heard."

Quistis nodded. _He couldn't have known. _"No, it's fine. Some people call her that." She tried to find words to explain it and eventually just settled on; "Not particularly nice people."

"I have to go. Nice meeting you Ms Trepe."

"You to Alec. Kids."

Finally she realised what had been bothering her. "Wait!" She held up a hand as Alec turned back to look at her. "When you noticed me, what did you mean 'the dress confused you'?"

Alec's face burned red. "It…ummm."

"You can't make me mad, Alec."

"It's an old colour, back during the old…er…three dukes before the one before auntie, I think. In the old days…" His eyes went everywhere except her face. "Red dresses were used by woman who…well…er…when guests came and needed entertainment…ummm…_male_ guests…"

_Just laugh it off. Don't shout. Don't get mad._

_Not at _him_ anyway._

She smiled wryly. "Well that explains a few things, someone just having a little joke I guess. Look after yourself Alec."

"You too Ms Trepe."

She watched as the three children disappeared behind the heavy wooden doors and silence returned to the rose Garden. Finally when enough time had passed for them to have gone quite a ways, out of earshot, the _slam_of her fist against the stone wall was hard enough to leave a mark.

* * *

><p>"How dare you, <em>HOW DARE YOU!"<em>

Leonard Nerva stared serenely up at the enraged woman and just smiled. "Can I help you headmistress?" He blinked. "I can't help but notice you've changed back into your-" He was cut off as a red flash of fabric was thrown into his face. The rational part of her mind was whispering calm but the rest of her shoved it aside. She stared down at the smiling man as he picked the dress from his face. "Is there a problem?"

"You slimy son of a bitch, you know damn well what my problem is!"

She didn't remember what she said next. She couldn't remember the last time she had been angry. She had been annoyed, she had been peeved and she had been exasperated as she tried to guide SeeD through a half-grateful but half-resentful world, and tried to placate half a dozen miniature tyrants that had sprung up from the remains of the Aftermath and Galbadia's abrupt downsizing. Even as her mind told her what she was doing she found herself unable to stop as the floodgates open and the bottled-up anger flowed out onto the smug, self-satisfied killer sat at the desk in front of her.

"I'm sure this is just some misunderstanding," Nerva said, still ever-so formal and polite, as if her insults hadn't left her mouth. "If there's something I can do to-"

She swallowed her rage at last. "There's _nothing_ you can do," she hissed at him. She wanted to leave, she wanted to speak with other people who didn't treat her like some plaything, she wanted Xu, she wanted to get out of this god-forsaken palace and become a person again. "Nothing at all."

"You're beautiful when you're angry, Tyynes is a very lucky woman. I've always wondered; which one of you is on top?"

She almost did it then, it was that close. She was already stepping forward when her instincts caught hold of the reins and pulled backwards hard enough she almost jumped away, as the smile widened and she saw that his hand was behind his back. _He wouldn't be crazy enough to kill me, a SeeD headmistress. Not with Squall and the others on the same continent._

"We're not done yet you and I," she said quietly, as she stepped away from Nerva's desk. As she did so she felt the air move around the room and knew that there were other guards behind her, their hands close to their holsters. "The duchess will hear about this. Whatever game you think you're playing with me I'm still a guest of this country." As if the duchess would care. _Shut up Trepe, shut up before you say something really stupid._

"The duchess is unfortunately busy with matters of state and will be unavailable for audiences, even with important SeeD personnel. I however, have never forgotten that I too was once a cadet of the academy-"

_I bet you haven't forgotten who signed your expulsion papers either._

"-and as a little gift to my once-superior, I've asked on your behalf that you be allowed free reign of the palace's outer grounds, as well as the interior gardens." He grinned that shark's grin again. "It's a shame for roses to spend all their time under a roof, don't you think?"

She glared at him for a moment before spinning around and walking out in silence, not trusting herself to speak. The second, the _second_ she could she was going to leave this golden prison and taste real air again, even if it was the same Dollet air as this awful creature.

She hated this fucking town.


	13. Sightless Eyes and Fading Minds

He frowned in annoyance as he wiped the snow from his hair, and wished that Quistis were here instead of him.

Squall stared out at the street before him as the snow cascaded down onto Deling's streets. As if the frozen teardrops contained some kind of soothing balm the beginning of winter had brought a measure of calm to the Galbadian city, calm that it had desperately needed. Those civilians and patrols that had driven along the boulevards had abandoned them as the cold had raced over the plains and descended onto the city, and the long roads had been given over to pedestrians. He could look down the street from the covered sidewalk and see two small children building a snowman in the middle of the street as amused Esthar checkpoint guards looked on, the lights on their armour casting a blue light that made the snow shimmer in the midday sun. He could hear laughter in the distance from the direction he had came; an impromptu ice-rink formed over a park's pond and hi-jacked by young adults looking for a good time. He wished he could just start walking in that direction. Find Rinoa and drag her away into the heart of the city that was finding some small measure of peace and lose themselves for a day, pretend that the dark spectres on the horizon were merely paranoid illusions.

He watched the children as they built the tall snowman, smiles on their faces as they rolled around in the street, serious looks on their faces as they assembled their cold man. He could see men and women smiling at them as they passed, and another pair that watched dutifully over the play. Squall looked on the loving parents and felt both a stab of envy and a stab of anger. He envied the simple tableaux of the happy parents; a simple label that he longed to be able to say of himself and Rinoa. And anger, at the fact that he had never had the chance to be one of the children in that set. His childhood had been the cold stones and bitter salt air of the Centran orphanage, and those he had once called his friends and siblings had been taken away from him until finally he shouted enough and cut away his emotions, a thing he wouldn't find again until he was a grown man.

_Staring at the damn place isn't going to get this over any quicker commander,_ he could hear Xu's voice ringing in his head. Never mind that what the woman had actually said was; _so you're going?,_ his subordinate had a way of implying things with a skill that made them clear as day to the person they were meant for. When the dust of his and Rinoa's arrival in Deling had finally settled she had handed him the piece of paper and noted wryly _I did the same with Quistis and she ended up a prisoner. Let's not make that a habit commander._ He'd kept it in his pocket ever since.

Which was how he came to be standing here, on a cold yet pleasant morning, with the snow beating down on him as he looked across the road past the children at play and the contented civilians, and wondered how long it was going to take him to marshal up the strength to push past the doors under that sign inscribed with a red cross.

_What are you going to do Squall? If you and Rinoa ever have children and they grow up and ask 'what was _your_ daddy like', will a shrug and a question-mark be your reply?_

_Is that an answer that you're happy with?_

He took a breath and pushed open the doors into the hospital.

* * *

><p>She wondered where he was and how he was doing. She wondered whether he had found more luck than she had. Mainly she wondered what it was, what it <em>was<em> that Xu had told him. Rinoa Heartilly adored Quistis like the sister she had never known, but she had never quite found a stable footing with the young dark-haired raven that her sister loved. In Balamb Garden at a distance, dressed in their SeeD uniforms, they had sometimes been mistaken for each other. At a distance at least, but up close and in their personalities they could not have been more different. When Rinoa had first officially made her entrance into the SeeD program as a raw recruit she had studied under Xu for her first few months, until her obvious and undeniable skills had taken her down a different path from the more martial woman. In those months there had been respect between them but no real friendship, and that bothered her more than she would have liked to admit. Rinoa had always prided herself on being in herself exactly the same as she showed on the outside. She bared her heart to the world and all she asked in return was that the world be as honest to her as she was to it. Xu Tyynes kept herself behind a mask, her calm regal features and stoic pose an impenetrable fortress. She allowed no emotion or outburst to escape, and aside from when absolutely necessary all those who had tried to get past those fortress gates to know the real woman underneath had been repelled.

_All save one._

"Nothing?"

"Nada."

Fujin shrugged. There was another who hoarded her words as though they were gil. "Nobody heard a sound." That she spoke at all spoke volumes of her frustration.

The three stood in the house of a dead man. Rinoa was wrapped against the chill in leathers after she had found something in the mansion's cavernous wardrobes in the blue shades she liked. After wondering for a second whether her fa- _Caraway_ had kept them for his mistress or some other woman she had swept away her misgivings as she had looked out of the window onto the snowfall. Deling City sat on a plain, and as winter settled on the world all of that cold air flowed down into the city. It had only taken one errant smirk from Raijin as she had walked in from the cold with hoarfrost covering her hair for her to learn. She would have worn more if she could have gotten away with it. Fujin had chosen a similar attire, with a colder shade of blue. Apt.

They stared down at the place where the body had been. Militia had removed it before they had arrived and now the two women and the man, with their escort outside. She'd balked at having to go around with an honour guard but after Squall had explained what had happened in Dollet Fujin had insisted. After argument the ghostly young woman had told them of her _own_ encounter with the dangerous fanatics.

_Everywhere we go. Oh well, now not the time Rin. Get to work girl._ "Could they have snuck in from…" She stopped as Fujin shook her head and was reminded again of how little she knew. Her experience of fighting before the war had been quick strikes against Galbadian positions, the elaborate train plan the hardest thing she had ever planned. Now here she was, a SeeD (_recruit, and don't you forget it girl,_ she chided herself) in her own right, and she had never been part of a murder investigation before.

"Who was he?"

Fujin shrugged as she ran her hand across the gouges in the wall. Long strips of plaster and paint had peeled away as something had torn through it. "Some researcher at the university. He fought. Here."

She could see that much at least. The home had been spacious by Galbadian standards, and ruined. Rinoa watched as Fujin paced the floors and painted the scene for herself and Raijin.

A broken chain on the door, but an intact lock The spyhole had been smashed in, almost certainly as the door had been-. "He opened the door on the chain, and whoever was on the other side kicked through hard enough to break the chain.

A smashed table in the hallway, shards of glass peppering the floor, and bloodstains on the carpet like red polkadot. "The victim had a weapon close to hand. Reached for it. The attacker broke the hand as it was on the table."

They moved through the corridor. A wide slash in the wall and shards of plaster on the ground. Rinoa got there before Fujin did. "The attacker- the _killer_ went for it here right? But he missed?" She was rewarded with a smile as they moved into the living-room, smashed and broken and with the chalk outline the only remnant of the dead man.

Another gash in the wall, this time red and black. "Another attack. A result." Rinoa walked up to the wall as Fujin spoke and the wide slice came to slightly above her chest. _He started dying here._

The rest was obvious and Fujin didn't bother to repeat it. Whoever the man was he had fought bravely but the wound had been the end, and finally his attacker had dragged him to the middle of the room and there cut his throat.

"It's wrong." She had spoken before she had thought, but Fujin's grin made her realise two things. She was being tested, and not just by the woman in front of her. _This is why you're so hard to like Xu._ "All this violence and nobody heard or saw anything? There was a _fight_ here Fujin, I can see that pretty well."No battle she had been in had ever seen silent.

Raijin grinned. "Not bad Rin."

Fujin waved a hand. _Go on._

Her mind whirred as she tried to remember all the exercises Quistis and the other instructors had drilled into her. She turned the facts every which way in her head but couldn't make them fit. Eventually she admitted defeat and turned to the other woman. "I don't get it."

Fujin didn't berate or patronise, and her voice was soft and quiet as she spoke, the sign her next speech would be a long one. "There were no sounds heard by anyone nearby. This is an old apartment, the walls are no more than cheap plasterboard likely the people next door could hear us talking if we raised our voices. Yet a fight to the death went unnoticed. This wouldn't be possible unless…"

Rinoa's eyes widened as she realised what Fujin was saying. "They were _both_ trying to stay quiet?_"_

"Almost there. The door."

She traced back over what Fujin had shown her and finally it came to her. "He has a spyhole, he opened the door with the chain still on. If he didn't know the person on the other side he wouldn't have opened it. Since he opened the door he-_" _She looked up into Fujin's eyes. "_He knew the man who killed him?"_

"Knew him. Trusted him enough to open the door. _Didn't _trust him enough to open the door without the chain on. Not that it helped the man," Fujin confirmed. "Good guess." The faint smile was genuine, and from Fujin the closest thing she ever came to an outright congratulations. "Now, what kind of man has friends like that?" Both of them instantly knew the answer.

"We need to search again," Rinoa and Raijin said almost at the same time. They didn't have to search long now that they suspected, and it was only as the clocks ticked inexorably towards midnight that Fujin finally chanced upon the cache, hidden behind a loose piece of drywall.

For all her quiet, Fujin was very rarely truly speechless. Now however she found herself with no words to say, even if she had wanted to speak some. "Well. Ummm."

They had spread out the pictures of Rinoa on the man's bed, something Rinoa found slightly inappropriate. It was some small consolation that all of them were newspaper and magazine pictures, rather than something worse. All of them had Rinoa in various states of smiling and waving, and all of them were distinctively lacking in her husband and knight.

There was also the gun.

"This was man a sorceress cultist?" Rinoa asked in frustration. _Is there nowhere we can escape from these guys!_

Raijin spoke up for the first time since they had arrived. "And he'd had a fallin' out with his comrades, seems like." The huge black man stood, and almost had to stoop to avoid his head hitting the low ceiling. Stood by Fujin they made an unlikely but feared pair. "Time we visited the school, y'know? See exactly what this researcher was searchin' for."

* * *

><p>"You're here to see…"<p>

Squall hesitated before the desk and tried to remember the name of the man. Try as he might he couldn't shake off the icy doubt that gripped his heart, a doubt that whispered into his ear

_maybe not knowing would be better_

but he ignored it and gave the name of the doctor. "If he's available. It's really quite important."

"I'm _sure_ it is but Dr Trelane is really quite-"

Squall sighed and pulled the lapels of the coat aside to reveal the shining SeeD badge. "It's _really_ quite important," he said with a cold emphasis.

The nurse frowned as if the SeeD commander was something unsavoury that had crawled down out of the upper wards, and Squall felt an instant and unfair dislike to the woman. _She probably sees a thousand soldiers a day through those doors and none of them as ungrateful as you._ Deling General was the biggest hospital in the city. Also the only. The rest were a ragged collection of small schools and personal homes given over to a small family-owned healing business. The best of them were students who had left the Galbadian medical schools to seek better money, or those few soldiers who had medics training. Para-magical healing was totally unknown outside of Balamb and Trabia. Without GFs the best healing force that a normal human could manage might be enough to erase small cuts and bruises, and all the known GFs in the world slept inside Balamb Garden's walls. Esthar had technology that didn't need magic to work miracles. The western continent fared less well, and as Squall sat on the cold and uncomfortable bench and watched there was a steady stream of men and women and children coming and going from the building.

"Mr Leon-"

Squall stood up as the man approached and waved his hands in a cutting motion across his neck. He realised this might not be the most lucky gesture to use in a hospital, and settled for the traditional finger against his lips.

The doctor shrugged. "As you will. If you'd follow me?"

They walked through the hospital and Squall tried not to look as they passed doors. His SeeD training made him look anyway. He hated hospitals. Since his first memories he had always been healthy (_scars to the forehead not withstanding)_ and what medical help he'd required had always come from the stern but matronly hand of Dr Kadowaki. To Squall Leonhart hospitals were places people went to die, and the glances he stole through glass doors into the rooms beyond seemed to confirm it. As they walked and ascended he noticed the din of the first few floors falling away, until it had receded from a cacophony into a mere background hum, and before him was a long white hallway filled with silence.

The doctor that the nurse had called Trelane walked on. "I assume you want some privacy." Now that he was saying complete sentences the voice reminded him of Cid; someone who was infinitely more knowledgeable and understanding than you, and knew it. It fit with the age of the man. He had to be older even than Cid, well into his seventies. _Well that would make sense, if this man knows what Xu says he knows._ "We'll go to the roof. If even there you feel Galbadian spies can bug you this place has an excellent psych ward I can book you into."

Squall pulled his coat against himself as the steel door swung shut behind them with a creaking whine, and the two men stood on the roof of the hospital. Heights had never been a phobia for the SeeD, and Squall stood at the edge of the roof as he looked over the city. In Winter the snow hid the worst of Deling's face, and he could believe for a moment that beneath it was a normal city, with normal leaders acting on behalf of their people, and not a nest of vipers clawing at power.

_Well, no time like the present._ But when he opened his mouth he found himself saying words other than what he had intended. "I'm here about the murders."

The old man smiled, his breath misting in the cold air as he did so. "Of course you are Mr Leonhart. Anything to help our brave rescuers. I do hear things."

That was no normal response. _Ignore it. _"Glad to hear it. Speaking of hearing…"

Trelane didn't look at Squall as he spoke. "I hear SeeDs and their agents are turning up dead in the streets and finding their way to my morgue. Now here's a live one in my hospital." The doctor shrugged and reached into a pocket, coming out with a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. Squall waved away the offer and the man talked a he lit up. "I can tell you how and most likely where they died and roughly for long they were dead, but I already passed this information to the tireless Ms Satomi. Speaking of whom I said I could take a look at her for that unfortunate speech impediment of hers, but she-"

"She doesn't like people enquiring," Squall cut him off. "She's…at peace with it."

A single raised eyebrow showed Squall that the man of medicine thought of that. "At peace with being a broken individual?"

Squall's heckles were raised. "It's her own choice. Now-"

"I can't give you anything else Mr Leonhart. I may be a Galbadian doctor but I'm not stupid."

"I didn't say you were-"

"It's how the world sees us. Well, half the world." Dr Trelane waved a hand over the edge of the roof, as if to encompass the city. "The half of the world sees us as arrogant bullies laid low by the mighty Esthar Empire, and the Esthar Empire sees us as nuisances to be pitied. Which part do you fall under commander?"

He could have lied. Didn't. "The second one."

"And why not? You gutted us, commander Leonhart."

"The Sorceress did that, not us. Esthar don't hold a grudge, you can _see_ that. They've even providing security for your own city against Doll-"

"Galbadia has only known true security when she has been powerful. You've stripped that power away and told us we didn't need it anymore, and left us at the mercy of those who still have some."

_Dollet._ "They suffered a lot under you."

"You think Galbadia didn't suffer?" He cigarette left the man's mouth to be waved across the roof. "We came through that quiet corridor on the way up." Squall nodded. "Victims of the Aftermath. There are hundreds in the city alone. None of them will ever get better. You're wondering why SeeDs are dying? Ask them."

_You arrogant son of a bitch. _Braindead zombies left over after the collapse of Time Compression, their minds unable to take the things they had seen, or the return to normality. "You want to blame someone for that blame Ultimecia." He felt the entire conversation slipping away for him, the knowledge he wanted balancing precariously on a precipice, and pushed past it. "This isn't what I-"

"-Came here to discuss. Obviously. You didn't come here to discuss information you already _had_ MrLeonhart. What is it you _want_?"

_Here we go. God Rinoa wish me luck._

"Before you came to the hospital here you ran an orphanage in the city."

"That's not common knowledge. How did you find that?"

_From a black little crow. _"A friend that I trust not to lie to me."

The doctor nodded tentatively. "It was for First War orphan and castoffs. There was a lot of that back then. A lot of widows suddenly couldn't support their children. We took in a lot of that sort, I'm sad to say. We kept records of course."

"This one wouldn't have been a war orph-" He paused a he realised he simply didn't know. Maybe his father was long dead in some Galbadian battlefield. _The timing would fit too._ But somehow he knew that wasn't the case. "All I have is a name though."

A shrug. "I'll help if I can. What's the name?"

"Mine."

* * *

><p>He walked out of the hospital and didn't even noticed her, as dazed and confused as he was. The weight of the knowledge pushed down on him like an anvil on his soul, and it was only when she tapped him on the shoulder that he realised just how out of it he was.<p>

"Hey stranger."

He pecked his wife on the cheek and smiled. "Rin."

"Squall I swear to God did they mistake you for walking wounded and dose you up? You look like they gave you the little blue pills."

_Something like that._

"What'd you find out?"

He smiled. "You first."

She hung from his arm as they walked the snowy streets. Even as the civilians had went home to sleep away the day the security guards and Estharian crews remained out, their lights ever-glowing in the winter cold. Rinoa and Squall walked the paths between them like fireflies dancing from light to light, never straying off the path and into the dark city. "I spent all day at a murder scene, impressing Fujin."

"That's not easy."

"I'm very impressive."

"In many ways."

They laughed together as they walked, drawing a stare and a snigger from the nearest checkpoint guard, who nudged his friend. His friend nudged back and helpfully pointed out exactly who was walking down the street, and the sniggering stopped.

Finally she walked. "So what did you find?"

He sighed in the cold snow air. "Winhill." She repeated it back to him. "Apparently so. He didn't remember who came in with me, but that's where they came from." The cabinets had been full to bursting when the doctor had taken him down to the basement. Seemingly endless rows of metal filing storage. Out of the thousands of pieces of paper the Trelane had given it to him as though it were just some ordinary piece of paper. Squall had held it like gold dust, and read the few lines that really mattered. His name stood out on the yellowing paper like it didn't belong there, a concrete sign of his past.

_N: Leonhart, Squall_

_A: 6 months_

_O: Winhill_

"So next stop Winhill then?"

He wanted to. Wanted to drop this whole rotten mess back into Fujin's hands and just leave for the grassy plains and that small village over the hills that contained his childhood self. Whether it was the end of the journey or just another link he didn't care, he wanted to _know._ But he knew he couldn't. "Not with all this happening."

Rinoa filled him in as they walked, and the couple went into the Esthar night. One dreaming about finding where he had really and truly began, and another trying not to dream about the sword hovering over her father's head and ready to drop, and both of them held back by doing so by the duty they had.

* * *

><p>"<em>Did he listen? Will he go?"<em>

"No. No I don't think so. All that self-righteous bile won't let him, not while his people are dropping like flies in the city."

"_And our lady?"_

"I only saw her as he walked out. She's truly beautiful."

"_As long as looking is all you do."_

"Goddess but did you really have to do that to the poor man? He was just a teacher, he was harmless!"

"_He was far from it. They would have found his name eventually. At least this way he can't answer any questions when they do."_

The doctor rubbed his eyes and wondered, truly, about the strategy of the man on the other end of the telephone. He settled for a less caustic reply than the one he would have liked. "He'll answer a few just by who he is and what his job was. The woman Tyynes will catch _that_ I assure you." She had suspected him, he knew it. They had talked for mere minutes but that gaze haunted him. Knowing that she suspected him would have been better than the uncertainly that plagued his brain, but her face had revealed nothing. His mind went back to the mantra he had repeated since he had went looking for truths and became lost, tangled up in them beyond any hope of extricating himself without harm. The white corridor and silent staring eyes. _Do it for them. Do it for her._ "Now what?"

"_Sit tight, you've done your job."_

He was more tired than he thought, and he asked the question without thinking. "And what are you going to do?" The man at the other end of the landline must have been the same, because an answer _did_ come back.

"_Clip a falcon's wings."_


	14. Taking Chances

"He's what?"

"_He's gone ma'am, and Nida too. The gateman says they left on a 'training mission'. Clothing and weaponry was missing from their rooms and records show they went into Headmistress Trepe's room, but we don't know if they took anything."_

She rubbed her eyes, trying to erase some of the tiredness she felt behind them, as she listened in. The dusty and polluted air around Galbadia combined with the city's towering architecture and leagues of metal made the connection jumpy as hell but the last lines had come through loud and clear. Xu Tyynes prayed for many things, varying them on what aspect of the world was troubling her that day, and today she prayed Odine would stop fiddling around with whatever project had diverted his time and turn the clunky wardrobe-sized communicator into a real working technology. Her one tour of the Esthar facilities after the Second War had told her that for all Esthar's technological sophistication, far too much f it balanced inside the mind of that tiny unhinged man. And now this. "Do we know where he-" she stopped herself. "I'm sorry of _course_ I know where they went. Thanks." She signed off from the eager young SeeD on the other end of the line and laid back in the recliner. Fujin had been as conscientious as she could and her quarters were as nice as she could have hoped for. For all that though in the Galbadian winter they seemed cold and empty.

She didn't waste her time getting angry. Not at Zell and not at Nida. Xu had always taught herself not to react to what she couldn't change and the feeling inside her now wasn't anger or surprise. It took her a moment before she realised that she envied the hot-headed young man. She had wanted to scream and claw at the walls of that stuffy palace, tear out the smug self-satisfied persona of the duchess and stamp it all over the floor. Instead she had walked out of the city and taken her job and her comrades halfway across the continent. But that's how she had always been, years of keeping her own emotions and wants down under lock and key, subsumed to the dream of Garden. The perfect subordinate, attentive and oh so _clever._ Always knowing what the commander needed, often before they did themselves, she had quietly made herself indispensible, made herself _needed_ by Garden. Cid had been as genial a superior as anyone could have asked for and Squall was simply grateful for help. Norg had been beyond intolerable and she had bent over backwards (in one humiliating case literally) to avoid interacting with the wretched old Shumi.

Then finally she had let herself go, simply opened up and let it all pour out, and her reward had been absolute bliss. Somewhere deep in her heart she suspected she didn't deserve this, and that any minute the universe would notice its colossal mistake and snatch it away, never to be seen again. She had felt that ugly concept raise its head when Quistis had been led away from her and she shivered at night at the thought of it.

_Get past it._

The thunderous knocking on the door heralded the dawn of a new day in the gloomy city. In that instant, looking out of the window at the snow covering the mansion grounds that still somehow managed to be a nasty shade of gray as they fell, she could have packed it in right then. Walk back to Dollet, find Zell and Nida on whatever stupid dumb hero-quest they thought they were on and start doing some _damage._

Instead she took a deep breath, swallowed her anger and opened the door.

"Mornin' Ms Tyynes," Raikin said genially as she stepped out of her room. "Anything planned for today?" The huge man had attached himself as a bodyguard since the attack upon himself and Fujin. Even back at B-Garden before the War Xu had only known Raijin as a looming shadow poised behind Seifer Almasy. Even with the awkward glances she sometimes got as they travelled through the city she could see the appeal. XU knew she could fight, knew she could fight off anything the dank city could throw at her, but nobody looking at her ever seemed to believe it. Raijin on the other hand was a giant danger-sign that followed her around like a tame shark.

"More of the same," she replied curtly as she walked. For all of his penance she could never quite, never quite bring herself to entirely forgive what he and his partner had done, why they had followed Almasy's half-mad dream. One day, she promised herself, she would ask. "Just more of the same."

_Wait._

"Wait."

Raijin turned as Xu halted mod-way down the corridor. He looked at her nervously. "Yo?"

_There's no way they were…_

_They wouldn't._

Nida wouldn't. She had worked with Nida for years and knew him as well as anyone else in Garden, knew his morals and his limits. But _Zell…_ "I need to go back to the comm room." She was already walking fast as she left Raijin standing there, looking at her receding figure with a confused look on his face.

_Zell definitely would._

* * *

><p>Nida shivered in the sea air as Zell almost bounced of the small boat and wondered whether it was pure energy or some special kind of obliviousness that allowed the man to jump around the cold dock in summer clothes.<p>

"Hyne, _finally! _Man but no wonder this city is so crazy if they spend their time so close to the sea."

Nida stared off into the distance of the city as Zell waxed eloquent on boats and his dislike of them.

_Boy you don't know what you're doing here. Did you really want to get out into the air _that_ badly?_

Nida sighed as he stared out over Dollet. You could get lost in the maze that was the city, the palace the only real unique building. Centuries of building and re-building on the side of a hill had erased the others and turned the city into the brick-paved labyrinth. _Where do we start looking?_ Somehow Nida didn't think they could walk into the nearest bar and magically overhear what he needed. "Just be grateful we're on solid ground again."

Zell noticed the way idea was looking around and mistook it. "What, expecting a welcoming committee?"

_No, just stalling, _he didn't say. He was nervous, and he knew why.

He had never been a member of the field team, or a practical instructor. Nida knew he had found his niche early on in his SeeD career and while he loved his job it left little time or inclination to get his hands dirty. Most of his contact with the outside world came from staring at the scenery from the Garden's windows, and while the bird's eye view was gorgeous it was hard to experience the world from hundreds of feet away through reinforced glass. Now here he was, in a place he wasn't supposed to be looking for someone who definitely wasn't supposed to be found, and even if he found her what was he supposed to do?

"You still thinking?" Zell asked.

Nida gave a small shrug as he realised they were still standing on the dockside on their own, and he started moving in the general direction of the crowd. Zell followed close enough to be heard over the noise of humans crushed together. "Thinking about our first step."

"First step is find a way into the palace. Second step is to find Quisty. Third step is to run like hell."

And there it was, the problem he had been dwelling on since he had thought, really _thought_, on the boat-ride over and his brain had asked him: _do you really comprehend the seriousness of this situation? We're sneaking into a technically friendly country to infiltrate their government._ _Do you have any goddamn idea how pissed they are going to be? _"Zell I don't think-"

"You think too much Nida." Zell's voice didn't change an octave as he talked, but Nida could almost feel the intensity that radiated from the man. "You know me, I don't give a damn about politics or any of the crap Quisty and Xu deal with. They have my friend, they have my _sister_. I knew she doesn't show it but I know Xu's tearing her hair out on the inside over this. I'm _getting_ her _back_."

_A knight in dusty leather._ "And when we _do_ find her? Then what? It's not like we're extracting some hidden spy, they damn well _know_ they have her. I think they'll notice when she's gone."

"We'll burn that bridge when we come to it."

"Cross. Not burn."

"I prefer my version."

Nida shrugged and resisted the urge to laugh. Away from the dockside and the sea the air was almost breathable and he wondered whether spending all that time up in B-Garden's cockpit was doing something unsavoury to his lungs. "We'll need to find some bridges first. Any ideas?"

"I got at least one, but no way you're gonna like it." Zell refused to explain as he led Nida towards air that smelled considerably less like saltwater and considerably more like another kind of water, much thicker. "A bar?" His request for an explanation was cut off as Zell

He was right.

* * *

><p>"So there's nothing I can do here?"<p>

Fujin shrugged as she replied. "Nobody to shoot yet." This annoyed Irvine Kinneas slightly and Fujin saw it. "Sorry."

"No problem," he said shortly.

The two were nervous. Irvine's training had been at Galbadia Garden before the war, and after it the cold winds had taken him away to Trabia where he worked with Selphie. Fujin's life at Balamb and then Galbadia had kept them from interacting too much; just two more people working in different branches of the same organisation. But the woman made him nervous. Selphie and Rinoa were both cut from the same cloth, an optimist's soul that wanted to believe the best of people and looked out on life with a smile. Quistis was a warm heart when you finally got close enough to crack the ice. Even Seifer had had his dreams, and with all the shit that dream had put them through the man had at least had fire in his blood. With the younger woman though Irvine always found himself off-put. Just standing there against the window in her blue jacket and trousers Irvine was always put in mind of some predatory bird. When G-Garden had invaded Balamb he had been assigned to defence, but he'd caught Zell as the teenage martial-artist had come back from their encounter. _Forget the big lunk, she's the dangerous one_, he'd said as he limped off to the infirmary. Standing there now in the same room, if things turned out badly again, somehow, Irvine wasn't sure how things would go down.

He coughed nervously and tried to push the thoughts from his head. "So what's your view on all this anyway? You believe all this crazy stuff?"

The two were sat – well, _one_ sat – in the warn room, the fireplace blazing with heat as outside the snow continued to fall. He knew that the others were outside in it but somehow he couldn't find it within himself to care. Much. Fire was a premium back home – _so Trabia is 'home' now eh? –_ and he intended to enjoy the warmth while it lasted. He'd even gotten to take his coat off and the chair he lay in was so comfortable he could have gladly sunk within trace into it.

Fujin glanced over at Irvine. "No," she said, her words barely carrying across the room to the man. "You?"

Irvine shrugged. "I was brought up Galbadian, before the war. Only Sorceresses we ever saw were in fairy stories and that dumb movie Laguna made." He chuckled at the thought. "Poor guy never lived it down once they realised who he was." He shrugged as Fujin's facial expression told him exactly what she thought of his mental derail. "The only Sorceress I know is Rinoa."

"Ultimecia. Edea."

He thought for a second before he shrugged. "That's a different thing." Edea to Irvine would always be Matron. Ultimecia… "First time we really met was inside that old castle." He gave an involuntary shiver at the memory that place; a twisted nightmare of architectural magic and broken creatures stuffed with the power of the old witch, set against a dead and timeless world.

His reverie was interrupted as a knock sounded at the door. He tried to lever himself from the depths of the armchair and eventually gave up and just shouted for whoever it was to come on. The door swung open to reveal a nervous-looking young man dressed in what was undeniably a Galbadian dress uniform. Irvine heard Fujin sigh as she caught sight of the man.

"Begging your pardon ma'ma, but-"

With a dismissiveness and curtness Irvine had never seen in the woman – she might have been cold but Fujin had _always_ been polite – she nodded and simply waved the boy away. The event ended as the young men shut the door carefully, and if he didn't know better he would have taken Fujin's expression for a sneer. "Who's that guy?"

"Aide."

"Of?" Irvine felt like a fool as Fujin almost visibly bit back the reply they both knew she was about to make: _Didn't you read _anything_ before you jumped in here?_ "Of, of course."

Fujin stood and grabbed her coat. "Tell them I'm gone."

"Going where?"

Irvine turned as Selphie walked in through the door. She chucked off her greatcoat with a heartfelt sigh as she stepped over to the fire. "Ooooh that's nice."

"To meet the generals." Fujin slipped out of the door without another word.

Selphie _harrumphed_ as she fell back onto sofa next to Irvine. "What's she – hey that's nice – what's she up to?"

"Nothing important. Feeling at home yet?"

Selphie laughed. "First time today I've not been able to see my own breath. People outside are acting like this is some huge snowstorm." The inch of cold flakes that covered Deling City would have been called a mild summer fall by Trabians. "How're you doing?"

"Feeling a little like a fifth wheel," Irvine admitted.

Selphie leaned across the gap between the chairs and kissed him gently. "My poor bodyguard."

"I didn't even bother taking my pistol out with me today."

"You must have felt naked."

"Hey, you know I prefer the shooting to the talking. Speaking of which; _Squall's_ out there looking at leads? Is Xu so desperate he'd have Mister Monosyllable himself helping out"

"You know he isn't like that anymore." Selphie tried to shrug as expressively as she could while buried in the soft leather. "Him and Rinoa volunteered to pitch in since Quisty's out of bounds."

"Wonder how the big man's surviving without the golden guiding hand," Irvine mused, and dodged Selphie's playful punch. "Last time I checked Xu had him chasing doctors."

"That's his own thing."

"Oh?"

Selphie sat up and her eyes glinted with curiosity and interest. Gossip, in other words. "He's trying to find his parents. Apparently Cid gave him something that pointed him here and he thought hey; why not?"

That brought Irvine up short. His upbringing had been different from his adopted brothers and sisters. Galbadia Garden hadn't had access to the beyond-powerful beings known as GFs, and his few experiences with the creatures had kept his memories intact as he had grown up. He could still remember back to the first few days with the rest of the gang; their arrival at Galbadia Garden on the assassination mission

_that you failed_

that had gone wrong, the walk across the world and the final journey into deep time. He remembered his surprise and joy at realising who these people were, friends and siblings he had once grown up with. He remembered too his utter, utter shock at realising they had not remembered him. Late at night once and in his arms Selphie had asked him what it had been like. _What was I supposed to say?_ Was the answer he had given. What he had left out was the crushing worry that dogged him; the fear of failure and the _what if_ that had stopped him from shouting outwho they all were, for fear that they would turn to him and reply; _so what?_ "Why not, huh?"

"You ever thought the same thing?"

Irvine looked at Selphie in surprise and saw her eyes staring back into his, wide brown pools he could become lost in. "Nope," he replied, glibly, and cursed himself. "I mean…not really." _Technically true._

Selphie could see something behind that reply, but she could see something else too and gave him space. "Not really. I'm happy the way I am." Almost faster than Irvine could follow Selphie picked herself up from the couch and threw herself into his, landing with a soft thud across his lap. "The boat back isn't for another week. You know, while Squall and the gang are off fighting crime we'll need a way to occupy ourselves."

Irvine tried to squirm into a more comfortable position. "I'm sure Raijin or Almasy could find something for us to do."

"Oh? No ideas yourself?"

"Well, at least _one."_

* * *

><p>"You've lost your mind," Nida said with an intensity he was desperately trying to get across to the other man as the two walked towards the building. A squat brownstone structure that only differed from those on either side by the sign scrawled very faintly by the door. Painted brown on brown, impossible to see from a distance; a pair of wings, encased on a rough circle.<p>

"Trust me."

Nida did and he didn't. Zell's plan was somehow both simple and complex, and had all the hallmarks of Zell himself; utterly self-confident and incredibly reckless. They had left the bar full on information but little on plans. Zell had picked their clothes with more care than Nida would have thought and they had blended in to the rest of the bar patrons flawlessly. A few drinks and a few questions had done the rest. The attack on the 'SeeD brat' was still top news in a town were very little happened, and Zell had returned to the table he and Nida were sharing with a smile and…_this_ idiocy/genius.

Item: Headmistress Trepe was being held within the Dollet palace.

Item: The attack on Squall and Rinoa carried out by Sorceress cultists.

Item: Sorceress Cultists took great pains to know about the 'enemies' of their church.

Item: The Orphanage Gang were _persona non gratis_ to Sorceress Cultists.

Solution: Find a Sorceress Cult and dig out what they knew.

"If you think you're the chosen of God, you make damn sure you know what the devil is up to. Let's liberate some information."

It would be pulled off, Nida thought, as either the most daring undercover operation in Garden history, or their headstones would become warnings to generations of future SeeDs on how not to do it. And that wasn't the worst part of it.

"Of course it won't work. Everyone knows who I am." Not bravado. Simple fact. Already the man had received some second glances and shocks of recognition.

Nida let out a breath of relief as Zell spoke the words. "So, let's-"

"But yours isn't."

Nida realised now why Zell had taken a table near the back of the smoky bar, and insistence on entering separately. "No way."

"Nida…"

Nida knew he wasn't a coward. He'd served Garden faithfully and well since he had joined, and those who knew him – a small pool admittedly – had never been given cause to doubt his dedication. He had no doubts of his own courage, only his ability. "You're asking me to find and join a Sorceress Cult to find out what's happening with the headmistress."

Zell sipped happily on his drink. "Yep."

"Assuming they know anything."

"They do." Zell nodded and when next he spoke it was with much more venom in his voice. "Believe me they do. Those people hate SeeD, and they hate us especially. If one of the Gang is here they're going to be crawling up walls trying to figure out a way to get to her, especially these new guys." For a second Nida was amazed as something very resembling fear lashed across Zell's face. "It's not like it was. They're getting crazier, this new leader has them riled up and _organised_, across three whole continents."

"Bad?"

"Bad enough Laguna is worried they might try something. Something _big,_ and we don't even know who they all are. These are people who saw Ultimecia as the saviour of the goddamn world. The Aftermath just made 'em more 'devout'. You want people like this in charge of an army?"

Nida nodded. "You think someone inside the palace is influencing the duchess?" He blinked. "You think they're trying to _take over the government?_"

"I'm pretty sure." Zell shrugged. "She was always a little nuts but she was never crazy. Keeping a national leader hostage is pretty good sense if you're thinking about makin' war on that nation. SeeD isn't a nation but I think the result would be the same." He stared hard at Nida and the other man met his gaze. "Let's get to work."

Nida looked up. From the back of the bar he could see out onto the street, and up the hill towards the palace there. In one motion is drained his glass, stood up and nodded. "Yeah."

* * *

><p>"Hello?"<p>

She looked around as the man approach and shivered. Not from looking at him. Since the incident with the red dress she had taken to wearing her old suit again, and while comfortable they were made for a warmer climate. The Dollet salt-air clung to her skin and made her clothes heavy. She knew she was probably coming down with a cold from staying in the outer gardens so long but it was such a joy to be outside the palace walls (_if not their iron gates girl, don't forget it)_ again that she ignored it. "Yes?" She turned as she answered to see the man standing there, nervously poised in the small doorway that led outside, as if afraid to come out into the light. He reminded her of someone, and it took her a second until suddenly she realised he reminded her of _Zone._ The young revolutionary you could have walked over and he would have apologized for the marks on your boots. The man before her seemed to give off the same aura of broken-down pity. "Can I help you?"_ Help you find your way elsewhere, _her tone said. She knew it was rude, knew he probably didn't deserve it but didn't care anyway. She wanted to be alone in the gardens, free of the whispering asides and glances from the palace workers whenever she passed.

"Are you alright Ms Trepe?"

She nodded curtly as the man finally stepped from the shade of the doorway out into the afternoon light, and she got her first good look at him. In the light his resemblance to Zone vanished, and stood before her was a well-built man with a shock of dirty auburn hair and a nervous smile. She put the smile down to knowing who she was and ignored it. Quistis didn't think she was vain, but she knew what she had and while she didn't often flaunt it she didn't hide it either. "I'm sorry, are you…"

He reached out a hand and out of habit she shook it. "I came in with the children."

She remembered talking with Alec and the others in the rose gardens, and as the memory came up she realised she didn't remember how long ago that had been. She could imagine herself trapped her in the palace grounds, forever a prisoner of some malicious force that controlled everything around her.

_Is this how Ultimecia thought, in the end?_

"I was just…You seemed upset, was all," the young man managed to mutter out. He _was_ cute, and she managed a smile.

"Thanks, but I'm just tired." Hyne knew that was true enough.

"Anything I could help with?" the man asked, and she realised she hadn't even asked his name as an idea flashed through her head.

"Actually you could, mister…"

"Liard."

"Mr Liard, I-" she cut herself off as she realised she was still holding onto his hand, and she jerked it away before she could catch herself. "Sorry, sorry. I'm afraid you caught me at an awkward time."

"Alen, please. It's fine, this place does that to you."

Maybe it was the unthreatening posture after weeks of being surrounded by eyes that ears that reported her every move back to that rat Nerva, or maybe it was just being able to talk with someone her own age who seemed like a normal human being. She smiled. "Quistis."

"So what can I do for you?"

She didn't know why she had asked. She was aware of her own training, sitting back there with the rest of human instinct that said _don't trust strangers,_ but sat there in the cloying air she simply couldn't work up any distrust for this man. Her SeeD training perked up as it realised what she was about to do but was shouted into silence by a small part of her that she had always had, but kept locked down as much as she could. _What the hell woman, you've spent your whole life weighing options and picking out the correct path. Roll the dice, just this once. After all, what do you have to lose?_

"Can you deliver a letter?"

* * *

><p>"Can you please check? <em>Right now?"<em>

Xu stood in the room again, a sinking feeling in her gut and threatening to sink even lower as the SeeD custodian went to check on what she had asked. She had never liked using the machinery, trusting more in meeting someone, the real and immediate presence of a person looking at her that she could measure and quantify, than she did in Esthar's satellite technology. Unfortunately as teleportation para-magic had never been successfully attempted before she had to stand there, staring at a metal bank of lights and switches, as leagues away a man or woman she barely knew went down and checked on a certain door in a certain room

_Her room_

and made the trek back to-

"_Ms Tyynes?"_

Xu had never given herself a title. She had never been an instructor and Squall's position as commander was inviolate. She took a deep breath and readied herself for the worst. "Here."

"_The…I'm sorry but I have to say…"_

_You did it. You did it, you dumb son of a bitch._ "They opened it up." Such was the cold anger in her voice the underling at the other end of the connection could only manage a fast _yes ma'am. _"Were they…were any…"

"_Only one ma'am._" The man said a name.

If the device had had a handset she could have slammed on the machine to close the connection she would have done so. As it was she settled for merely pushing a button. Leaning back and staring at the ceiling she tried to think though exactly what it meant, and how much of a disaster it could be. Would he use it? Would he be dumb enough or reckless enough to think it could possibly help? She could look outside and see the ice on the window, and as she looked her brain kept going back to one thought.

Of all the ones he could have chosen to steal away with, why _her?_


	15. The Witch of Dust

_Some memories I keep like precious jewels, others like valuable heirlooms; treasured and kept safe by taking them out of their ornate holding places and examining them from every angle. Nothing new is created here and so I must look deeper and deeper into events that have already happened, to wrench out greater use of them. A conversation with a man long dead develops a thousand layers as I examine every move each of make, every word said and not said, every twitch of every muscle held up to the microscope to stare down and uncover some new meaning. Sometimes the memory is simple and cannot hold my attention. Other memories, my most precious, I can spend years watching, disassembling, teasing out new meaning from old memories. Sometimes with a single discovery, a twitch of a smile or a nervous gesture unnoticed at the time I can see a whole new path that could have opened before me had I only been more attentive at the time. They say hindsight is twenty-twenty but to a Sorceress locked in a dead world hindsight is infinite._

_But not all memories are allotted space within my castle or – for those most precious, memories of dear friends and loves long gone – my mind. Some I keep like loose paper or curiosities, they lay on-in-by the place that I left them. And some memories I discard, like poison. Looking over them again I find one I particularly dislike and examine it before it is discarded. A time before I compressed the world, before I finally gave up_

* * *

><p><em>A god has come to the shores of my castle to die.<em>

_It's almost corpse now, I can see that much. Like a beached whale that in its haste to devour the seals from the beach dies flopping and writhing futilely on the dunes it has come to rest here. I can look back and see the path it had taken across the landscape. The massive creature has carved a swathe through the mountainous rocky continent, destroying firmament and tearing up forests in its wake. I can only assume it realised too late the situation that it had found itself in, and ran as fast as it could for the closest source of sustenance. To the starving being my power would have been like a sun across the horizon, a font of nourishment. That I would never have allowed it to drink from that well is something it will never know._

"_Stay back."_

_My argent protector puts herself between it and myself as a massive groan sounds from the body and the cathedral-like bulk shifts. It looks ridiculous, like a giant island tipped to one side or a spinning top covered in green muck left to rest. I move past my companion and _shush_ her into silence as she starts to warn me. I know this being, know it well and nothing it can do is capable of harming me now._

A fish gasping for air beside a stream, just out of reach of its mouth a writhing maggot in the dirt.

_The image arrives in my head as I approach the fallen godling and I see we have both reached the same conclusion. Although I take some small offence at being thought of as the maggot in this particular plateau._

Two hands meeting, a square of white cloth passing from finger to finger.

_I accept the apology as graciously as I can, even as I can see the request coming a mile away, a desperate plea that I will have no choice but to refuse._

A figure in a cloak of riotous patterns and colours drinks deep from a well covered by barbed wire. As he/she/it drinks the water in the stone well does not diminish.

_No. I tell him simply. I can feel a cold wind behind me and know that she saw the image, whether she meant to or not, and against her better nature she feels threatened and afraid. Afraid I might take the beast once called the world and make it my new protector and discard her like a suit of armour too battered to be used._

A gravestone.

_Ah. At least this one isn't begging. Others have come, guardian forces with nothing left to guard and precious little force remaining to them. The power that supplied them died with humanity, the dreams and latent energies of the people gone away. With the reverberations of my anger still circling the globe they have one by one come to me to beg for mercy, the traits and manners they had stolen and adapted from man still dictating their way. Some died proud, turning away at my refusal and going off into the wastelands. Others pleaded for mercy as I left them there on the shore. Some few attacked me in blind rage, easily dispatched by my companion by the magic I provide her. The training and skills are bone-deep and the poor creatures stand no chance._

_I raise a hand and before I can think it is done. Where there was sand and the dying guardian force there is now a blazing pyre, sand fusing into glass where my magic burns away the flesh and bones and soul of the creature and I send it to whatever heaven awaits such a being._

"_We should go back."_

_I find myself wanting to nod and shrug at the same time, and as we both turn back to the cold stone castle I spare a thought for the thing and it's ever-dwindling ilk. Even with their godlike power and indescribable minds they are truly parasites, unable to survive without a host to cling to._

_I would pity them, but I reserve all my stores of that particular emotion for myself._

* * *

><p><em>The memory falls into ashes as I let it go from my mind. Rainbow skies flash above suddenly and I feel cold, cold in this world of endless nothing. I look up and can see shapes there and my heart skips a beat. Something is happening, up there at the surface. I can only sit here and look back on my own life for any clue to what is happening, but there is nothing. I learned little of my powers while I lived – which was, really, the whole problem – and if there's some significance of the turbulence above it is lost on me. It's been happening more and more lately and I have no clue as to whether this is good or bad. Maybe if I could reach through the sky I could ask one of those above me, or pierce down to the worlds below. Unfortunately the barriers that separate us are made of stronger stuff than even my sorcery can penetrate. I suspect they may <em>be_ sorcery, and sorcery more powerful than my own at that. I wonder what different paths they took, to become stronger than me. Maybe one single choice was it all it had taken. Whatever the difference however we all share the same penance: We were not strong enough, or smart enough, and now we are trapped in these layered worlds like flies in amber, and like amber the light can only penetrate so far down. _

_I suppose in this I am lucky to have my rainbow sky, to provide _some _colour to my world. I am lucky to have any sky at all. It could have been worse. Much worse._

_Do you remember?_


	16. Powers of the World

"_Well, that's that, I guess."_

_It was a small ceremony. Not even that if they could be honest. More of a farewell, thanks-and-so-long. Except how do you even get that feeling across to things like that? He'd never junctioned one, never been close enough to the hot end of the barrel to need to, and in some ways he's sorry he's missed out but in others – several others – he'd relieved. He was a quiet man and the idea of something sharing the inside of his own skull repelled him._

"_Seems a shame really."_

_Nida glanced across and sees the faint look of longing on Zell's face. He could pretty much guess why, the young martial artist (ignoring the fact that they were the same age, for some reason Nida had always thought of Zell as younger than him, the same he always thought of Trepe as older than her years) had spent his life training to become stronger, and what was stronger than a Guardian Force? "Had to be done," he replied with a shrug. It felt trite, but he couldn't think of anything else to say._

"_Someone should say something," Rinoa said wistfully, and Nida noticed the slight winces coming from Trepe and Kinneas. Kinneas' dislike of the magical creatures and their memory-stealing proclivities was well known, but he doesn't know why the instructor reacts this way. Maybe some bad experience with one. He'd read the literature when he joined SeeD, fascinated along with half the planet about the things. Elemental beings born out of the dreams and personifications of mankind, allowing magic itself to course through their host's bodies and granting abilities beyond that of mere mortals. He had never spoken with one but sometimes, during the Second War when the Gang – hard not to think of them that way sometimes with the legend already firmly in the world's mind – had been recovering between sorties he would see them occasionally wondering the halls. Sometimes they would just…stop…and stare at the sky. Or a single word said into the air, as if listening responding to something only they could hear. They'd seemed larger than life back then, all six of them. The teenagers that walked like gods among them. Squall and the gang used the borrowed power to carve a path across the planet, but from the look on the commander's face Nida wonders whether the man thinks it was worth it._

"_They served faithfully and well," Headmaster Cid intoned, as with a dull and heavy _clunk_ the metal bolts fell into place and the quarters were silent. "Come on," the old man said genially, "the least we can do is have a drink in their memory."_

"_I'll drink to that," Irvine muttered, but if the laconic cowboy meant it as a joke it came out as more of a sigh of relief. Together they turn and leave the room, and Nida glances back long enough to see Trepe lay a hand on the door and stare up at it. Then she too turns away, as if the sealed room was a hospital and she were saying goodbye one final time to a terminal patient._

_The sunlight bouncing around the mirror-sheen halls of the upper-levels came as a relief after the subdued gloom of the MD level. "Can't believe you're going to be living down there," he said aside to Quistis as the elevator _ding_ed to a stop and they piled out into the fresh air._

"_What can I say, I like the quiet," she replied with a slight smile. Xu's flanking her, hasn't really left her side since she came back from Galbadia, and Nida wonders about that._

"_So we're just going to leave them there?" Selphie asked._

_Squall shrugs and pointedly glances at Nida, who took up the slack. "Not much else we can do Selphie." He'd tried calling her Ms Tilmitt once but she'd verbally cleaned his clock, and he hadn't tried it again. There was a constant air of informality that surrounded Selphie that drove the administrator of his heart nuts. "It's either storage in B-Garden's system or keeping them permanently inside our heads." He'd taken a look at the GF storage device once and been shocked to see it was little more than a few massive magnets and conduits drawing energy from Garden's engines. Whatever environment the technology the Centrans had used to build their shelters generated, Cid had told him, the demigods seemed to like it well enough._

"_No thanks, I've had enough of them in my head to last me the rest of my life."_

"_I kinda liked it," Rinoa said. Nida could see Squall's sharp intake of breath and for a moment could almost see his thought-processes. Rinoa had used GFs for as much time had passed between her unofficial joining of SeeD back before the Second War and the discovery of her Sorceress powers. Sorcery was understood even less than GFs and Rinoa's awakening in orbit had turned her mind toxic to whatever GFs. Not long enough for the feeling of another mind inside your own to make your shiver. Not enough time for them to start eating away at your memories._

"_We don't need them anymore," Quistis said gently. "They helped us, but I think if we'd known the price beforehand we would have left them where we found them and took our chances alone."_

"_Amen to that," Squall said, with perhaps a little more feeling than he'd meant to convey._

_Quistis smiled, she had heard it too. "They did their job well, and we'll remember their help. Now say goodbye." That marked the end of the conversation as thoughts had turned away to other, more important subjects; the new school year, the wedding – no scratch that, The Wedding. Nida knew it deserved the capital letters. From his lofty perch at the cockpit he might not have heard as much as those with their ears closer to the ground floor, but even the news of Squall and Rinoa's upcoming marriage had managed to get up to the top level._

_He knew what Trepe had diplomatically left out. He knew that she and the headmaster had had long talks into the night leading up to the building of the vault. Machinery could both open and close and he knew that the door that had swung so solidly shut could swing open again just as easily. Nida threw the thoughts out of his mind as they sat down and Cid brought out a bottle. The GFs had been used during an extraordinary time, a year when the world had flipped on its axis. Guardian Forces belonged to another age, a crueller age that would never come around._

_He smiled as Cid poured and they brought their glasses together for a toast to mark the end of an era._

_May it never come again._

* * *

><p>She wanted to ask but couldn't, as the dusty blonde man sat down opposite her. She hardly dared look, and finally the tension built up inside her until she was forced to ask. "Well?"<p>

"Signed and delivered."

As fast as it had gathered the tension drained away from her like a damn bursting at the seams, and she smiled what felt to her like her first real smile since her comfortable imprisonment over two months – _dear Hyne has it been so long?_ – ago. "Mr Liard I owe you more than I can say." She felt like laughing. She felt like jumping up and hugging him, this man she had met mere days ago. "It was…it was a letter to someone dear to me."

"Her grace wouldn't approve of you having contact with this person." He nodded when Quistis blinked in surprise. "I've known duchess Nuo impersonally for several years now. You're not the first person she's tried to quietly suffocate in comfort. Certainly the most significant though. If it counts for anything I'm sorry for it."

The bitterness in his voice brought her up short. "You sound like you know her quite well."

Quistis watched as the man called Alen Liard shrugged and looked out to sea, visible in the distance. Something about him gave her a slight shiver, something that ticked at the back of her mind. If she had been younger she might have mistaken it for desire, but as ruggedly handsome as the man was Quistis could only think of the letter that was – godspeed – headed for Galbadia as just one more unremarkable envelope in a pile of hundreds. "Oh, for a while now." She could hear in his voice a tone she well recognised. "I joined the household a few years, ago. Just before the Second War."

She realised what he meant. "You knew her father?"

He smiled. "Guilty as charged. The legendary duke."

Her mouth ran away with her before she could rein it in and the sound was in the gardens before she could stop it. "The legendary dead duke." A half-second of quiet and she went cold. "I'm sorry! I don't know what came over me. God, I…"

"It's okay. I always wondered how he would have reacted to all this. The daughter isn't the father, I'll admit that."

The Duke Nuo. She had met him once and saw instantly how his city had come to love him. Quistis had grown up with laws, with rules and a harsh childhood. Here before her had stood the father figure she wished she'd had as a child. Then the second war had come, and Galbadia had invaded Dollet. The old duke had met them at the gates and begged for peace for his city-state and mercy for his people. For his troubles they had shot him in front of his own gates and let the tanks spray mud across his body as they had passed. Li Nuo had been watching from the windows of the guard tower and according to legend her fingers had left claw-marks in the stone blocks that still remained. Occassionally renewed, if you believed the _nastier_ legends. After the Second War had ended and Galbadia been left a paper tiger, small wonder the woman had smelled blood in the water and tried to wrap her jaws around Galbadia's throat. "Oh yes, I wonder." _Did anyone ever take her aside and ask her; what would her father have thought?_

"And now, my payment." This delivered with a twinkle in the man's blue eyes.

Quistis smiled in smite of herself. "Unfortunately Alen I'm not exactly at my most influential right now." Using his given name felt so natural she didn't realise she'd done it until after she had, and if he noticed he didn't seem to mind.

The smile didn't go away. "Well I was tempted to ask for my own personal SeeD bodyguard but I'll settle for something a little less physical."

"Oh?" She felt herself leaning back in her chair and for a moment, say outside in the palace gardens with the sun beaming down and the sea breeze nonexistent she could imagine she was free again.

"I read your biography." She groaned and he grinned in response. "My response exactly."

The biography had been a running joke at Garden since a copy had found its way across the water to Balamb. Wildly inaccurate and containing 'eye-witness accounts' that varied between exaggerated incidents – a chance meeting waiting for a train or a brushing contact in a local watering hole transformed into soul-searching conversations – and total fiction. They had all had paragraphs in it. Squall had boggled that people he didn't know cared enough about him to buy the garbage. Rinoa had taken it all in stride, some remnant of her silver-spoon Galbadian upbringing inuring her to the attention. Selphie and Irvine had revelled in it, safe in the knowledge that their relationship formed an impenetrable barrier to protect Irvine from his own not-quite-so-longer-deserved notoriety. Zell's mother had gladly told the interviewer everything she could remember about her hero son, and the others had given him grief for weeks. Her own reputation had given her an air of mystique she tolerated as well as an air of inapproachability she loved. The rest of the book had been filled with the usual garbage. Useless sensationalising, conspiracies, love-triangles (this one especially made Quistis and Rinoa laugh, and Squall uncomfortable). The usual crap.

"All the interviews and column inches talked about you all. You all made quite the impression, as you can see from the kids when they play." She nodded. Knights and Sorceresses had taken on a slightly different air since the end of the war and the revelation of its events. Now when children played it there were always arguments on which of them would be the Good Knight and which the Bad Knight. Squall and Seifer would both have been annoyed, albeit for different reasons. Squall had always wanted to be his own person, not just some vaguely-remembered stereotype, and now he was immortalised as the archetypical Good Guy. Seifer of course was the opposite. Alen Liard talked on. "-about you especially, but one thing I never noticed them talk about much was your Blue magic, even though…I'm sorry did I say something wrong?"

He had heard the sudden indrawn breath at the words and his concerned expression only made her like him more. She ran over responses in her head and settled for the most truthful and the least revealing. "That's not a happy topic for me."

_Kid what are you some_

"I'm sorry, I didn't know."

_some kind of monster?_

"No way you could have." She took a deep breath and tried to push the memories back down again. Occasionally she would try and face them, but every time she brought them out of their box and looked at them impassively though the glass she would carefully place them away again. "Just…not something I like to talk about."

_Monster_

The sound of laughter in the gardens broke through her little bubble of remembrance as Alen stood and glanced towards it. "That's my cue."

"They're great kids," she said, and meant it. "Let's talk again sometime, when you're not so busy playing the ringmaster." She meant that too.

* * *

><p><em>She felt it running through her bones, like an electric current had stabbed its way through her body, and she gave up trying to stand and simply collapsed panting against the walls. The cool crystal against her cheek felt indescribably good.<em>

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

_They had split up. Against all their training and everything they had been taught they'd decided for whatever mad reason – fatigue or arrogance or temporary insanity – to divide into smaller groups (_pairs, Quistis, two people are called a pair)_ to find their way through the towering edifice that had smashed its way through Esthar's coastal defences and was even as she sat there headed for the centre of the nation, to whatever end Seifer had in mind for it. It wasn't a question of stopping him. They _had_ to stop him. The only variable was how fast they could do it. They tried to stand again but hissed in pain as needles shot through her legs, and her hands found no purchase on the smooth crystal ways and she slumped back down._

_It had never been this bad before. There had been stranger – the massive tentacle creature and the choking gaseous mist it had gifted her that had had Irvine rolling on the ground in laughter as she had coughed and coughed after using it. There had been the feeling of crackling air around her as light had solidified behind her eyes and threw itself towards their enemies. There had been the cool winds that wrapped around them, knitting together wounds and salving their bodies. Now there was this, and she didn't know whether she had crossed some line she wasn't meant to or whether this was it, this was what her gift was eventually going to use to kill her with. She had went after Zell as the impulsive teenager had ran off in pursuit of whatever shadow he had spotted and when the machines had melted out of the walls she had felt…_something_. The same something she felt when watching impassively as a monster or enemy had called forth its power and left her thinking _I can use this. _And she had always been right. She had been right now too, as staring down the massive cannons of the impassive machinery she had felt herself reaching through the crystal walls of the Lunatic Pandora and dragging whatever she had found there into the light, throwing it into the faces of the steel beasts. When the sounds of tearing metal had faded, the pulsing light and shockwaves that felt like massive wings beating a harsh wind against her skin, she had looked up into a ruined corridor. All that had remained of the guard-units were slivers of torn and blackened metal decorating the walls, floor, and ceiling._

_And that _thought_ that had came through from the GF in her mind when the power had burst forth…_

"_Hey Quistis are you- QUISTY!"_

_Zell came barrelling around the corner like a demon, and she almost smiled at the look of worry on his face._

"_Are you okay? I came back when I heard the- _ow!_ Hey, what-"_

_She lowered her hand again. She wouldn't admit it but even the small slap had hurt her hand. She could feel her bones creaking underneath her skin. "That's for going off on your own. Hyne's sake Zell you could have got lost, or hurt."_

_Zell blinked as his face tried to decide whether it wanted to be confused or hurt. It settled for the former. "_I_ could have been hurt?" He leaned down as she tried to stand again and offered a shoulder. If it had been Irvine or Squall she might have refused it, tried to stand on her own. But Zell was different. It would have been like kicking a puppy. "That blue stuff huh?" He received a nod. "Don't trust that stuff Quisty, not if it does this to you."_

_She smiled at the concern in his voice. "Thanks Zell but I've got it under control." _Now.

_Zell looked around the chamber, the metal shards buried deep into solid crystal and the smell of burning ozone in the air. "Control. Right."_

* * *

><p>"We're just…we're just <em>great <em>fans is all!"

He watched at a distance as Rinoa smiled and laughed, the way she lit up the room whenever she did so. The two younger girls were blushing madly and one was frantically trying to get her hands working in the cold winter air to get her camera working. Finally the _click_ and flash subsided and Rinoa waved as the two girls ran away giggling and starstruck, and she walked back to him and linked her arm in his. "What, they didn't want my autograph too?"

Rinoa grinned up at him. "Jealous much?"

"Maybe."

Squall and Rinoa walked the city gardens, with nothing to do. Fujin had walked up to them bluntly and told them _everything is covered commander_, and he had shrugged and accepted the day off gladly. No sooner had they left the mansion when Rinoa had dragged him over the city's gardens, the sole patches of green in the murky city. Even in the snow that turned it the same pristine white as the rest of the city it seemed different somehow from the rest of Deling, more pure somehow, an Squall felt happier here than he did in the encroaching mass of bricks and cheap housing that seemed to make up so much of the Galbadian capital.

Suddenly he jerked forward as Rinoa surged ahead of him, and he had to let go of her hand before he fell into the snow. "Hey!"

"I _knew_ this was here somewhere!"

He caught up with her past a wall of hedges, to see-

Rinoa ran out onto the ice. Even in the cold the water of the lake hadn't completely frozen over, and where it had it was covered in snow that had fell and fell over the night. "It's nice Rin but I don't think we brought our skates or-"

"Hush, watch." Standing in the middle of the half-frozen lake, Rinoa tipped her head back and spread her arms wide, and for a moment the image flashed through Squall's mind again of his wife caught, half-buried in the sorceress Adel's body and drained of power, and shuddered. He knew something was wrong when he kept shuddering, and realised that the ground itself was reverberating like a giant drum. He could hear whispers and see other people around the park staring towards them and muttering, and still Rinoa didn't move. Suddenly a light flashed through the park, bouncing from the snowbanks and around the open park, and as Squall shut his eyes against the glare as a sound like a giant hammer falling onto snow sounded through his ears.

"Done!"

He opened his eyes tentatively, and sighed as he saw Rinoa standing there happily in the middle of her handiwork. The piled and uneven snow and puddles of water that hadn't frozen over were now solid pristine ice, and as he tried to walk towards her he realised too late he wasn't wearing his SeeD-issue boots, and his feet slid out from under him to the sound of Rinoa's laughter.

"Pretty good huh?" She helped him up and the two stood there on the perfect ice-lake. Squall heard laughter and glanced sideways to see a pair of children slipping and sliding as they ran out onto the ice, the parents shouting for them to be careful and flicking their eyes nervously towards the pair. Rinoa gave a smile and a wave back. "Every winter vacation needs an ice-rink."

He smiled as he looked down at her, at her happiness in the happiness of others as more people emerged from the park to see what the fuss was about. From the corner of his eye he heard a gasp as an old couple caught sight of Rinoa and gave a hasty bow and signed a quick circle in the air with their fingers, but for once he decided he wasn't going to care. Let this be her moment. "You are…amazing." The GFs were locked away tight in Garden's core, Rinoa's transformation could only have come from one place. "Sorcery?"

"I've been practising." She pushed off with some foot and effortlessly slid out across the ice, holding a hand out to him as he glided away. "Dance with me, solider-boy."

"I'd love to Rin, but-"

She saw the expression on his face and sighed. Turned to look in the direction Squall was facing. "Hello, Raijin."

To his credit the man had the decency to look sheepish. "Sorry guys but we need you back."

Squall couldn't resist a sigh. When things looked too good to be true they usually were. "Trouble?"

Rinoa looked back at her creation as they left. Children laughed and slid their way across the now-solidly frozen lake with their parents watching on, and one of the quicker couples had already collected their skates and were etching curving trails onto its surface. Squall could see the longing in her eyes and knew it for what it was. Once she would have stayed and laughed with the others, but Squall's world had almost wiped away the traces of her old existence, leaving only a faint longing in place of that innocence. Still, walking through the cold air with the warmth of her presence beside him, Squall kept close the selfish thought that if that loss was what it cost for her to be with him, here, now, he was glad of it.

* * *

><p><em>She felt like she could break the world.<em>

_Staring out at Squall's concerned face from within her body she somehow couldn't bring herself to care about the worry he was showing. This man who had carried her across an ocean and into space itself, and from within this glowing shell of a body that moved to the command of another woman she simply. Didn't. Care. She heard the dull crash as he reached out to her and was thrown backwards, and as Quistis shouted in concern and bent down to check on the poor man the thought ran through her head – he's mine you _bitch – _and only the other sorceresses' urge to get out, get out of that spinning metal box, get out and get to Adel's tomb kept her from annihilating the blonde woman on the spot. She could have done it. She could feel the power flowing through her, could feel the primal force and energy bubbling up just below the surface of her mind and if she had been in control of her own body it would have terrified her. Another part of her looked within herself, saw the layers upon layers of power, and felt a thrill go through her. It sat there, waiting for her to use it. Her own personal source of power at her fingertips and no-one else's. She looked at it, her Sorcery, and liked it._

_Liked it far too much._


	17. Little Birds

"So what's this about?"

Xu turned, breath steaming from her mouth in the cold air as she watched Squall and Rinoa approach. "Sorry."

Squall waved a hand. _No problem._ "We didn't come here to relax." All of them knew that wasn't exactly been the case, but none of them acknowledged it. "What's going on? Raijin said you wanted us?" The big man had vanished back into the snow. Not a small feat when you were nearly seven feet tall and black as night, in a town where the faces were as pale as the weather.

Xu sighed, and in it Squall could feel something deeper than mere frustration of tiredness. "It's not actually your help I need commander." She looked at Rinoa.

"No."

"Comm-"

"_No._

"Squall." This from Rinoa, and her husband glanced at her as she put a hand on his chest and gently but insistently pushed him back. "What do you need Xu?" She shot a look up at Squall that clearly told him they would speak about this later. In reply Xu turned and gestured up at the home they stood in front of. It was an unremarkable brownstone terrace in a street of unremarkable terraces. Except that this one had three SeeDs and several Galbadian militiamen stood outside it, trying to look inconspicuous and failing miserably. The woman sighed again and Rinoa had the idea that she had been here for a long time before they had arrived.

"Let me explain."

* * *

><p>Fujin stood in the cold next to Seifer, both of them staring out at the grass beyond the city. As if punishing only the city for whatever sin a city could commit, the snow had only brushed the plains beyond Deling, and even at their distance they could see greens and browns poking up through the white carpet. Mainly browns now, as the grasses and plants died underneath the frozen water. He had offered her a bottle of something that had looked cheap when she took it and tasted cheap when she drank it, and she resisted the urge to haul it off into the distance and hear it break on the cobblestone roads. Too symbolic, maybe.<p>

Seifer on the other hand drank it down. It could have been water, for all the effect it had on him. "So how are you enjoying being watched by our little golden boy?"

"Fine."

They stood in silence as they watched the snow fall over the city. After days and nights finally Seifer had abandoned his traditional long trenchcoat and actually worn something warmer. Without it to Fujin's eyes he seemed…less…somehow. Like the coat had contained some exterior part of Seifer's soul and without it he was less than he had been. He had worn the thing through his SeeD training, through his generalship in Edea's Galbadian army and through his exile as a traitorous Sorceress' Knight. But the title Seifer had desired for so long – ever since watching that dumb movie as a child, Fujin thought – belonged to Squall now, and the albino woman could only guess at how much that tore at the man's soul. No matter how much people grew up and left their childhoods behind there was always a thin sliver left behind, buried inside the walls of the heart. Her own was a source of comfort. Seifer's stabbed at him like a dagger.

"Feels like home again."

He shifted his feet as she spoke and instantly she knew from the half-disgusted half-embarrassed look on his face that he thought the same thing. She had realised it in Esthar, all those months ago when she had arrived at the silver city and asked the nearest guard to take her to Kiros Seagill. After the recriminations, the pointed weapons and penetrating looks from the weary-looking man they had finally sat down in the detention block and talked. From there the path from Esthar to Deling had been a short one, with a single detour.

* * *

><p><em>The metal of the chair is cold underneath her, the lights above are harsh and blinding and the smooth walls, ceiling, floor of the square cell reflect the halogen beams off each other and onto her like a focussing lens, and she's starting to sweat inside the scratchy cotton dress they've given her. When Kiros had handed her off to the stern and officious-looking soldier they had taken everything from her and given her the too-small shift she had to keep constantly tugging down lest it ride a little too high. She could hold out a hand to eye-level and look through it almost. She couldn't see the mirrors but she knew they had to be there, and she wondered what it must look like to those assigned to watch her; a bone-white ghost against a white background.<em>

_Finally the door slid aside with a soft hiss and Kiros stepped back into the room. Fujin couldn't help but notice how badly he wore his state robes. They looked ill-fitting and he was constantly tugging and adjusting them as he spoke, and when he moved they seemed to get in his way more than not. She'd been too young to fight in the same wars as him, and unlike the Orphanage Gang she hadn't went through the strange visions/possession/time-travel that had been thrown about and rumoured in soldier bars. Looking at him now she could see the soldier shining through the statesman, like a chunk of sharp glass with a picture painted on. No matter how pretty it looked it was always ready to cut you. She waited. _

_He obliged, not coddling or threatening. "We can use you, don't doubt it." He shot a glance above and to the side and Fujin knew that was where the camera or mirror or whatever Esthar magic they were using to spy on her was. "Leonhart and the others did a great job, now we have to pick up what's left. I don't know whether you came here for punishment or absolution but you're going to get both." He reach into the small folder and brought out a sheaf of papers. He took a step forward and suddenly stopped, frowning. "I know, I know. I think I can help myself against one unarmed woman." He shook his head and handed her the sheaf. "Sorry. Soldiers, you know."_

"_Always in the way."_

_A wry smile, and for a moment they were two irregulars surrounded by a stuffy military. The moment passed past enough as Fujin opened the folder and saw what was inside. She was looking at the coastline of the western continent's eastern shore. She could see the clump of buildings that could only be Dollet, with grey lines leading off into the distance as roads led away into the landmass. Some were simple lines but around some others she could see brown streaks and clumps of black dots that could signify vehicles or villages. They looked like maps but with a level of detail she'd never seen before. She was about to ask who had drawn them when she realised what she was looking at._

"_Yes. We took them from the Ragnarok. It can go quite a distance now that it's repaired and rearmed."_

_She shivered involuntarily as she heard the other thing, which he specifically wasn't saying: _If we wanted, while your army was busy invading my country we could have taken the Ragnarok to Deling and blown your city into dust. If we wanted._ She could feel her throat tighten, the sting of her old wound mixing with the fear there._

"_This is Dollet attacking Galbadia." He held out a hand and she gave back the pictures wordlessly. "Squall and his merry band might have beaten the big bad sorceress but we still have half a world that hates the other half."These pictures were taken hours ago. This is happening _now._"_

"_Our fault." A quiet voice said. It took Fujin a few seconds to realise it had been hers._

"_Yes," he said simply. "Adel and Ultimecia are gone, or at least so Odine tried to explain to me." Kiros shrugged. "So now the people held under their thumb are loose and they're all looking at that big crown left behind and wondering how it would look on their heads."_

"_Yours, surely." Esthar could pick up that crown and rule the world, and it wouldn't even be that hard, and both of them knew it._

"_Laguna doesn't want it." The tone of Kiros' voice told him he wasn't exactly in step with his president's wishes, but Fujin chose to let sleeping dogs lie. "Laguna wants peace and love and everyone happy, so by Hyne we're going to get it, and you're going to help."_

_Finally. "How?"_

"_You know Galbadia. You know the citizenly, how they're likely to react to us swooping down and solving all their problems. Congratulations on your position as head of the Galbadian government. We'll call it something nicer of course, something with 'rebuilding' in the title or something, and probably a 'transition' in there too of course just to make sure they know we don't plan to call it Esthar Two and make them dress all in pastels, but you'll be running the city."_

_They both knew that wouldn't entirely be true. Her every move would be watched by the men Kiros would send with her, and any attempt at rebellion or unwise action but bring swift but brutal repercussions. Laguna might have wanted to be a hand that reached out to the world but Kiros Seagill knew if you wanted to do that with people who hated you, the other hand had better be a damn great fist. "Yes, sir."_

_Kiros nodded in acceptance. "Who do you want going with you? Make a list," he told his new underling._

"_Raijin."_

"_What, really?" Kiros asked, and from his tone Fujin _knew_ that he had already tried to get her erstwhile comrade into a room like this one, and failed. "Fine," he said, "but you're gonna be the one who reels him in." He hesitated for a second. "You're taking one more too."_

_She knew, _knew_ who it was he was going to say, and for a moment she wondered how long this meeting had been plotted out. Certainly he knew how she would react when he said the name, as he handed over the folder simply marked 'S. A.'_

"_Although it may as well stand for Stubborn Asshole," Kiros muttered._

_And so her new life began. "_

"_I always wondered why you followed him."_

_She was quiet as she thought. To the first time they had met, on the side of that cliff. The words he had said and the look in his eyes as he had stared past her across the cold ocean. His dream, and a place for her in it. "He was different from the other students, same as us."_

"_Different how?"_

"_They were kids. We already weren't."_

* * *

><p>"Knew you would come."<p>

He was so old he looked like he would fall apart, and she was afraid to take his hands lest they tear off like dry paper. The younger man behind him, young enough to be a grandchild, watched the old man with a look born from years of concern, shooting glances at Rinoa that wavered between worry and awe. Rinoa took the man's hand carefully.

"They beat him. They beat him and turned him out of the church."

The house was old. When Rinoa had been younger her fath…Caraway had used to take her sometimes when he went to visit the old cadre, the solders that had trained _him_ back when he had been young. The great general going to them ad paying whatever form of tribute young soldiers paid to old, when they climbed higher than their tutors ever had. They had lived I houses identical to these, filled with pictures and mementos from having lived in them so long. Heavy with memories. Rinoa stood there and didn't know what to say, so she looked around. Photos of smiling young men and family snapshots. A beaming young woman who could only have been the man's wife. "I'm sorry." She had no idea what to say. Xu's words outside the house: _He won't speak to anyone but you Rinoa. _"Is there anything I can do?" She gasped as the old man seemed to fall forward, and almost reached down to help before he completed the motion and realised he was kneeling, reaching out a hand for her palm and kissing it lightly. His lips felt like old dry leather on her skin.

"Grandad, that's enough."

"No, its fine," Rinoa said, kneeling next to him and helping him back into his chair. She felt a breath next to her ear and the words _thank you_, and then the old man was sat back in the armchair, asleep already.

"I was the one who called you," the young man said, and from his tone Rinoa knew he'd done it hesitantly. _I can tell that now can I? A little Xu rubbing off on you?_ "We were Church of Hyne members, until the arch…until the Aftermath."

She glanced down at the sleeping old man. A smile played across his lips. "I'm sorry, I don't quite-"

"Back before, we used to have a church, but someone burned it down and beat us when we left."

An old story and one she had heard before. Victims of the massive psychic upheaval caused by Time Compression searching for someone, anyone to blame for the disaster that left friends catatonic and family insane had fixated upon the only real targets they could; her those who worshipped her. If Sorceresses were angels of Hyne, surely they deserved it? Be removed, in case they should try to call it down again?

"After that I stopped going but my father and his-" _cult,_ Rinoa thought "-congregation retreated into the tunnels under Galbadia." The man shifted nervously and glanced out the window, and Rinoa knew he was looking at Xu and Squall, who were keeping a silent vigil outside. "That was where he found us."

"He?" _Time to go to work Rin._ She threw the random thoughts out of her mind like Xu's training had taught her, ready to record everything and miss nothing. It felt strange, like a full ballroom suddenly becoming empty. In moments like this she wondered how good an idea staying with the SeeD program would be, whether she would lose something of herself as she learned to become more like- _Enough!_

"He was…he was hypnotic. He told us that Ultimecia was the archangel of Hyne, and that we had failed her when she needed us most. Told us we could have a second chance if we followed the new Church and this man Aimsland."

_That name again._ Xu would be thrilled. "What happened?"

He shrugged. "A lot of people went with him. Younger people mainly. Just sick of being beaten up for having faith." He fingered a tarnished chain around his neck and Rinoa could see the Church of Hyne symbol; the nested circles and spokes, not the wings-and-eyes motif of the Sorceress Cults. Inclusiveness and progress, a far cry from the fanaticism of its unwanted sect.

"Not you?"

The man looked back at his grandfather, still asleep in the other room, and Rinoa could see the love on his face. He looked back at her. "My father died in the First Sorceress War. I'm sick of fighting." He grabbed her hand. "We're not all like those nutcases. Tell them."

"I will," she promised, and meant it. "Thank you for speaking to me."

* * *

><p>"You're kidding. There must be miles of tunnels down there."<p>

"_Under_ the city?"

Xu nodded as she tried to warm her hands in the night air. They walked through the street, Raijin ahead of them acting as a human snowplough. Anyone wishing them harm on _this_ night would have to be suicidally brave or packing a dozen friends. "Galbadia's built on a plain, and water runs down here a lot from the mountains. There's networks of caves and sewers underneath. _Apparently_ they're built just for drainage but I happen to know the old Galbadian military used it for a lot of their unsavoury projects. No telling what's down there now. I'll ask next time I see Ca-" She stopped too late.

"You're _talking_ with him?" Rinoa asked in shock as she spun to face the other woman.

Xu met her gaze and held it. "He led the military, Rinoa. He knows everything there is to know about this city, why wouldn't we ask him?"

She couldn't put it into words, instead settling for seething silently. Squall tried to put an arm around her shoulder but she shrugged it off.

Xu looked between the two and caught the tension in the air. She muttered some excuse about finding out tomorrow's schedule and jogged up to Raijin, receding into the foggy Deling air and leaving the pair alone.

"She's holding it together with her teeth Rinoa, don't blame her."

"I don't blame her, I just…_God_ damnit." She kicked out, and snow cascaded from her boots. She didn't know what to do with her anger. "Don't treat me like a child Squall. I'm not some china doll you need to watch out for. I can take anything but that."

"I'm sorry," he replied. He looked up as he realised that they had reached the mansion again, the brick walls towering over them. Inside they could ear Raijin already back and shouting greetings to the staff. Warmth spilled onto the street from outside and he thought how good it felt to have somewhere to come back to at the end of the day.

"Good." Rinoa sighed as she shook the snow from her coat and hung it up, the cold already banished to the outside of the heavy oaken doors. "What does the puppet-mistress have us doing tomorrow?"

"Going to talk to that teacher at the university. The one you found out about." Rinoa accepted his attempt at fence-mending with grace. "That won't take long though, only needs one of us to do it."

She smiled. "Thanks."

"Have any plans?"

"I'm sure I'll think of something." She wondered what Selphie and Irvine were doing. What Xu told them, probably. It seemed to be a running theme of their trip to Deling. She'd known people like Xu all her life; the quiet and invisible workers in positions just beneath the horizon, the ones that didn't make speeches or accept awards. But they made sure tomorrow happened the way it was supposed to, kept the machines greased and guns cleaned. At that moment Rinoa realised why she had never felt entirely comfortable around the woman. Her childhood after she had lost her mother had been filled with Xu's. Not evil or malevolent, simply functionaries with a job to do who had done it with the best of their abilities as she had coasted by, barely acknowledging them.

_Maybe he was the same Rin, did you ever think of that._

She kept her memories of Fury Caraway in stasis: The cold uncaring man who had thrown her away for his country. She kept the image locked unchanging in her heart and would have fought to keep it that way. If she remembered him like that she could keep her hatred fresh, a rock she always fall back on when sometimes her old life caught up to her and asked her exactly what the _hell_ she thought she was doing.

_But do you need that rock anymore kiddo, when you have something better now?_

She looked across at Squall, who smiled back, still waiting for an answer.

* * *

><p><em>Your mother isn't coming home.<em>

_Five words that had changed her world, changed her father into some other man, some other man with a heart made of stone. She had used to reach up to him, so big and strong, and he had picked her up and put her on his shoulders, so high she could have pretended she was a princess at the top of a high tower, looking down on her kingdom. He had taken her with him to the parties and balls that he and her mother had attended. She'd stay there, her small her gripping his own as they had waded through the sea of nobility, and if they had ever been separated he had always came back for her._

_Then the crash, and somehow even though he had been miles away at the time her mother had reached out and taken her father with her and left in his place a shell that walked and talked but no longer knew how to love. He left her alone in the towering mansion while he threw himself into his work with the soldiers, as if somehow making a country love him would replace the wife he'd lost. An endless parade of nannies and tutors, thankless and soulless women who smiled fake smiles and told her what she had to do or What Would Your Father Think had come and gone as the two had wandered through each other's lives, only vaguely coming into contact. He unable to realise why his daughter no longer loved him even as his armies stamped across half a continent and ground faces into the dirt, and she unwilling to try and make him turn and see. Finally she had broken free of the stifling air and went to Timber's fresh green breeze and found a life free of that suffocating Deling air. Now instead of facing each other across an echoing dinner table they faced each other across a pair of loaded rifles. He'd seen then finally, but it had been too little, far too late, and the little girl he had loved and left behind had changed out of his sight into a forest princess._

_Your mother isn't coming home._

* * *

><p>"I'm going to go see my father." He blinked, as if unable to believe what he had just heard, and she burst into laughter at the confused look on his face. "I did promise, remember?" She kissed him lightly before turning and walking to go change into something more suitable in the mansion's warmth. "You filled your half of the bargain, time for me to start on mine!" She hummed happily as she strode off, feeling so light and airy she didn't see Xu until she had almost bumped into her. "Sorry, I-" Her bright mood was suddenly erased as she saw the tears in her eyes. "What's wrong?" Even if the woman brought up bad associations in her mind, Xu was Quistis' friend, and that made her Rinoa's too. She was surprised then, when instead of trying to shrug it off the older woman burst into laughter.<p>

"Nothing, nothing! It's just…" Xu shook her head and wiped away the tears. "It's nothing."

Even as Xu folded it away Rinoa could see the letter in her hand, and as the other woman walked away quickly she gave a quick smile to her back. _She could use some good news._

* * *

><p>It was short, so short it had obviously been smuggled out somehow, and Xu could have showered in gold the person who had helped her get it out. She laid back on the bed and clutched the piece of rough paper to her heart as she stared at the ceiling, and for the first time in the weeks since she had arrived she slept soundly.<p>

_I've found a knight in dusty armour to deliver this. The duchess is keeping me like a bird in a cage but at least the cage has golden bars and the bedding is better than old newspaper. She's bringing her family into the city for protection, I think she's planning on doing something stupid. You can send letters back through this address but let's not test our luck. Tell me what's going on before my mind turns to mush.  
>Wish I was there, be glad you're not here.<br>I love you, I miss you.  
>Quistis<em>

She could feel the words against her heart like a shield against the loneliness and she sobbed once into the soft pillow, whether from relief that her lover was alright or sadness that she wasn't there with her she couldn't tell. It was just a piece of paper but it was enough, for now. She would make a reply in the morning. She only hoped to Hyne and any other god that was listening that Zell wasn't doing anything stupid


	18. Things Fall Apart

"Happy birthday. Here's a present."

"It's not my birthday."

Alen smiled as he handed over the thin envelope. "An early present then."

"Extremely early." Her birthday wasn't until the summer. She quickly folded the thin slip of paper and ink away into her jacket before anyone else could notice it, her heart pounding so hard she thought it a wonder that passers-by weren't looking around at the pair to see where the noise was coming from. She could feel it pressed there against her heart and wondered how fast she could get from the breezy outdoor gardens back to her room. She knew the pathways and corridors of the palace well enough now to know, but it wasn't fast enough for her liking.

She could see Alen looking at her, an amused expression on his face, and blushed a little at how much of a flustered schoolgirl she must look. He must have been better at reading minds than most because he pushed his chair back and stood. "If you'll excuse me, it's been several minutes since I checked on the kids, I have to make sure they haven't burned the house down."

"Thank you, again."

"A pleasure." He gave a semi-mocking salute as he walked off and left her. She managed all of five seconds before the urge became too great and she pushed through the heavy doors back into the interior of the palace. The duchess' palace remained an unchanging rocks she was trapped inside, but thanks to Alen she had a conduit out now, a small drilled hole that let the light into her prison. The letter almost vibrated inside her jacket and she was so focussed on returning to her room that she almost didn't see the woman before she ran into her. She couldn't stop fast enough though, and as she tried to skid to a halt she bounced off the woman in front of her and fell somewhat indelicatly. Se cursed inwardly at the loss of control and brushed herself off. "Sorry, sorry." She accepted the hand gratefully, and her mind only registered the strangeness of the grip for a moment as Quistis looked up into the gray eyes of Almas Jordin.

_feels like rotten paper_

She stood up and let go as quickly as politeness would let her, letting go of the woman's hand as soon as she could. She didn't speak, just stared at Quistis with those dead gray eyes that gave away nothing and let nothing in. They had run into each other less than a handful of times since Quistis' had been locked up in the depths of the palace, the only times they met chance meetings in hallways. There was something otherworldly about the duchess' bodyguard, like a part of the slim killer was elsewhere, and only her physical body was present. Some women could turn an aura like that into an irresistible mystique or enticing aloofness. On the woman in front of her – _woman, Hyne she must be younger than me - _ it went the other way, like trying to have a conversation with a body already dead and embalmed. She felt herself backing away and chastised herself as she knew why. Where the lithe silent ghost went, her other half would be close. While Quistis had no love for Almas Jordin, she had no particular hate either. Whatever pain or event had made her into this bleak shadow of a person was none of her business, and she couldn't work herself up to dislike someone who so obviously had no opinions towards herself. The same couldn't be said for the other.

"Miss Trepe. In a hurry?"

The voice of Leonard Nerva dripped with feigned politeness as he stepped out of the shadows he had been watching from as Quistis had collided with his partner.

"Nerva." She had tried to avoid the man. Ever since the incident with the dress the man's behaviour towards her had turned from unpleasant amusement – as if he were in on same joke and she were the victim of it – to outright condescending disdain. Whenever she caught him looking at her she felt like a deer in headlights and the urge to reach for a weapon she didn't have. Thinly-veiled taunts and barbs against her pepper the conversations she tried to keep short. Against her name, her gender, her lovers, her genteel imprisonment, and no matter how hard she tried to keep her emotion under a steel trapdoor she could feel the bile leaking out bit by bit as she was forced to share the same air as the rotten man. If the churchmen were truly right and there was a Hell, surely it couldn't be much worse than this place, stripped of power and influence and surrounded by people that either hated or ignored her. "Excuse me." She turned, but on some unseen signal Almas stood before her, staring up at her with those gray eyes. Quistis wasn't sure whether the flicker in the reflections from those pools was some spark of emotion or just a trick of the light.

"You and Alec have been talking a lot," Nerva said.

"Alen," she corrected him before she could think, and cursed her schoolteacher of a mind.

"He _must_ have made an impression then, if you can so quickly distinguish him from the brat."

She had been talking with Alen a lot since he had delivered her letter to Deling. And why not, when he was the only person in the entire palace complex whom she could stand? But be damned if she was going to give Nerva the impression he had gotten under her skin. Further under her skin. "It's nice to find someone with a little sense around here." The steel trapdoor shifted just a little too much. "Or morals."

"You wound me Ms Trepe. Your safety is our only concern and we take that job very seriously, don't we Almas?" He didn't wait for the half-woman half-girl's reply, just waved a hand in her general direction. Like swatting away a bothersome fly. Almas didn't speak, just turned and walked away. Even her footsteps made little sound. "She watches you, you know. Even when I'm out around. You've made quite an effect on her. She has a knife she keeps especially for when she's around you. I can't imagine why."

"What the hell do you want Nerva?" she spat. The letter burned like a fire against her heart. _Somehow he knows._ "This sad little game you seem to insist on playing with me is getting tiring." _One day I will be out of here, and I will leave your stench behind._

Suddenly he was close to her, far closer than she liked, and she realised how _fast_ he had moved. A second ago he had been across the narrow corridor from her and now he was so close she could almost feel his breath on her. In her career as a mercenary Quistis had met people before, people stronger or faster than her. She had always won, or at least kept her chances of losing down, by being smarter. But now suddenly faced with this half-tame killer she wondered whether she would be able to take him down, if the worst came.

As fast as he was inside her personal space he was out again, the smile on his lips even wider. Even as wide as it was the smile never travelled to his eyes. "Just a little fun. Wouldn't want you to get bored." He turned and strode off. "Take care of yourself Ms Trepe."

She stared after him. She felt frozen, like a death-row prisoner reprieved even as the executioner had his hand on the switch. She felt again for the letter hidden inside her jacket and, all pretence of calm lost, went back to her room as fast as she could. Checking the door was locked (for all it mattered, she _knew_ who had a master key) she finally pulled the envelope out of her jacket. She felt the tension almost physically drain out of her as she read it. Xu's heavy block handwriting perfectly conveyed the kind of person who wrote it and she could feel her heart contracting as she read it.

_Attempting to corral Deling government into doing good work. Rebuilding going fine.  
>Hunting down men responsible for attack in Dolletmuders in Deling.  
>Sq, Rai, Sei all being useful in activities besides shootingstabbing, for shock. Rin holding up well. You're a good teacher.  
>Zell and Nida in Dollet doing undercover work re; you and duchess.<br>Tell mystery helper if we ever meet I will buy all his drinks forever.  
>I will come back for you, one way or the other. If I need to bring Balamb Garden down on top of that rotten palace and burn it to the ground.<br>Xu_

She fell back onto the bed and held the letter against her heart, as if some magic force could connect the two letters and give them some contact. Staring at the ceiling she smiled gently at everything she had and hadn't said in the letter. Among all of it the third line stood out as if outlined in neon and she felt a surge of love for the impulsive young martial artist she called a brother. She wondered what he was doing right now, out there beyond the fence. The city was so close but still locked away beyond the iron bars and guards. Her one fleck of reassuring knowledge was that at least he wasn't going it alone. He had done great work in Centra but Zell Dincht was a country boy, and Dollet while Dollet was smaller than Deling it was a city packed small and tight, with all the complications a city added to their line of work.

_Thank Hyne for Nida._

* * *

><p>"She didn't go for it this time either. She isn't going to, at all. I could piss in her coffee and the icy bitch would thank me for the refill."<p>

"You're quite sure?"

"Ask me again, I dare you."

"Enough. I'll deal with it. Contact our lone knifeman and get him to move. We're starting tonight."

"Why wait? We could do it right now. We don't need that guy."

"No, I want absolute assurances when dealing with these people. We lost the last Archangel to them, we will not lose the next. Whatever argument you have with him will keep until after the resurrection."

"And can I…?"

"When I'm done with her, whatever's left is all yours."

* * *

><p>Nida stood before the door and took a deep breath as he raised his hands to knock. He was still wondering how good of an idea this really had been. Zell had been adamant on its success and to give the man some credit it had gone off very well so far. Dincht being Dincht though he hadn't exactly erased the bad aspects of his scheme, merely moved them around so that instead of things going wrong at the start of the plan, they would go wrong at the very end. Whether this was better or worse Nida wasn't sure, but since he was the one at the pointy end he was hoping they would go wrong late enough that he would already be out by the time they did.<p>

He shrugged and brought his hand down on the door, pausing where the luckless man had told him to. Nida stood there in front of the deserted warehouse and simply waited as his mind stewed itself in the possible ways this could fail. After Zell had put forth his argument that Nida should become a crazy lunatic Sorceress fanatic, his had put forward a point of his own. Namely; there was no way he, Nida, was going to ingratiate himself into the local Church of Hyne fast enough to be a) noticed as one of the hard-liners of the otherwise quite liberal church and b) investigated enough to be trusted and approached and c) get the information they needed in any quick timescale. Zell had had months to work his magic on the much less urbane cultists on the Centran continent, and the longer they stayed in Dollet the greater the chances someone noticed them here whom they really didn't want to. Finally after trying fruitlessly to think of anything more subtle, they had settled on simply finding a Cultist, any Cultist, pumping them for information, then have Zell keep them company while Nida ran in, asked his questions and ran out. He felt embarrassed that this was the best they could do. He wondered how Quistis would have reacted if she were watching him now,

_Disdain. Contempt._

He already had a watcher though. So to speak.

That one moment, when he had found out what exactly Zell had fetched out of Quistis' rooms, had been the closest he had came to simply throwing up his hands and getting the next boat back to Balamb. Zell had obviously thought it to be a pleasant surprise, as he had reached out a hand to wish him well on the 'mission'. Their hands had made contact and Nida had felt something cold and large and _strong_ slip into him. It had been described to him before but the _feeling_ as the Guardian Force flowed out of Zell's mind and into his own had been indescribably unpleasant. He imagined he could feel it as the magical creature had walked over his mind and lay down to make its nest in the place his memories were at. Shiva sat in his head like an unwanted guest he couldn't evict. Zell's trump card should the worst happen and he find himself uncovered and trapped. It was his first experience junctioning, and he wasn't exactly enjoying it. The ice-goddess had a personality to match her appearance and she didn't have trouble making her opinions on his hesitant and careful personality clear. Even if words were beyond her, she could transmit concepts just fine. They came from the being into his thoughts like random images and feelings beamed into his skull. He wished Xu was here.

_Impatience!_

"Alright alright! Jeez," he whispered under his breath, as hatch in the door slid aside to reveal a pair of suspicious green eyes. Nida held up his hand calmly, palm-outward to show the circled wings tattoo'd on. It would wear away in a day or so but hopefully that was all they would need. The door slid open ponderously and Nida could see how thick it was as vanished into the wall to reveal a robed figure gesturing him quickly into the dusty and rusted building. As it slid back into place behind him and the sunlight vanished he felt a chill. He tried to tell himself it was merely the winter cold, but he wasn't fooling himself that easily. "Thanks," he mumbled to the guard as he walked past into the depths of the building. It had been offices rather than a factory, the huge building segmented up into boxes connected by open doorways and arches, and everywhere Nida could see the dim scrawled white marks of the cultists, illuminated by candlelight. Everywhere around him he could hear a distant hum, the murmuring of prayers.

_Hyne there must be hundreds of people here. How do people not know?_

He answered himself as an old woman went past him, dragging behind her a small child who was practically skipping beside her. Smiling happily and dressed in normal Dollet winterware Nida could have passed her on the street. As he moved aside to let her pass only her eyes gave her away, the hard shining brightness of utter certainly. Only hardcore soul-deep religion, the utter certainty of purpose, gave a light like that. Madness, too. The woman faded away into the smoky darkness, and Nida was alone again, surrounded by men and women who would cheerfully have torn him apart if they had known who he was. Before he had left the inn he'd checked himself over a dozen times for anything that could have given him away as a SeeD. He and Zell had met only a handful of times since they had arrived in Dollet, alleys and other dark places where they couldn't be seen meeting. There was nothing on or around him that could reveal himself as Nida the SeeD. He'd even started combing his hair differently.

The light brightened as he approached what could have been the centre of the building. He could see candles on the walls now as well as the floor, the rooms swept clean. He was getting closer to the heart of the building, and as he turned the final corner the walls suddenly turned a pure white, and the light turned from the soft yellow of candles to something blazing white.

_Unsure. Haste._

A little confusing but he got her point; _get the hell on with it._ Taking as deep a breath as he could without drawing attention to himself, he pushed open the white door and went into the heart of the cult. In the middle of the building the ruined façade finally dropped away and he could have been standing inside a medical laboratory, the place was so clean. The only splash of colour against the glaring white walls was a pile of coats that had been piled up, obviously from people entering the sanctum. It smelt like incense and industrial cleaner.

* * *

><p>She must have fallen asleep with the letter clasped to her chest, because when she opened her eyes she was staring at the ceiling and it had slipped away The insistent ringing in her head made her think of too many glasses of wine after work, but she hadn't had a drop since she had arrived. Anyway that didn't sound like…<p>

"Ms Trepe?"

_It wasn't there._

She looked around but she couldn't see it, and instantly she knew it hadn't slipped from the bed or glided out of sight. The letter Xu had written her was gone and Quistis knew it wasn't because she had simply misplaced it. Her mind ran back over the options and every single one was awful.

_Oh no._

The door slid open quietly to reveal the shining eyes and shark-like grin of Leonard Nerva. "Ms Trepe, the duchess requests your presence."

_Oh fuck no._

* * *

><p>The children were there watching, that was the worst part. Alen Liard, her errant messengerfriend, was nowhere to be seen in the big audience chamber but the teenage Alec was there watching with something between fear and confusion, with the two younger children almost hidden behind his legs. Caty looked terrified to crying, wiping her years on her dress. Jon just looked sad, stood there dressed in a suit that made him look even more of a child than he was. Quistis would always remember that even as Li Nuo had stood there and raged and ranted, it was the children that had looked scared. Not of Quistis, but of their own relative.

"-_always_ known it would come to this. It all makes sense now. How you knew I'd keep you here I don't know but I _will_ find out how you arranged that little show in my city, Hyne knows I will-"

Quistis watched as the woman talked. At the air really, her anger only occasionally coming to rest on her, most times merely waved around like a red flag. She was sat on the throne and Quistis was struck how alone and uncomfortable she looked up there. A small woman propelled through her father's death into a seat she wasn't ready for. She was making up a conspiracy of whole cloth and Quistis had no idea, no idea at all, how she was ever going to convince her otherwise. She glanced around the room. Apart from herself and the duchess and the three noble children, Jordin and Nerva were in situ, flanking the throne just close enough that they'd be able to intercept her if she did something stupid, and far enough away a casual petitioner wouldn't notice them for what they were. A few guards were scattered throughout the chamber and two guarded the exit. Without the two killers it might have been possible, but that reptile grin and those cold gray eyes made her pause. If she had to fight her way out she was almost certainly going to get hurt, especially without a weapon.

"-have to say for yourself? Any more SeeD lies you'd like to tell us?"

_You've always hated us, ever since Esthar tugged on your leash and sent you home. You want to kick their ass but you simply _can't_ and so you want to hate us instead. Fine._ "We had nothing to do with the attack on your citizens. Our only concern was to help." That the attack had been on Squall and Rinoa wasn't something she was going to remind her of. "The letter is simply from a woman in extreme distress-" God wouldn't Xu love to hear her say that "-and you shouldn't take it seriously."

Nuo's face was triumphant as she leaned forward. "And your reply?"

That brought her up short. "What reply?"

She brought the sheet of paper up and instantly Quistis knew that whatever she had thought was going to happen, it was going to be infinitely worse. The duchess tossed it unceremoniously and she had to step forward to retrieve it. Instantly she heard the click of weapons made ready around her. She stared down at the paper and felt absolute disgust for its writer. She could guess who that was.

_Come as soon as you can. Have already given orders to Zell to begin planning the assault. I have the run of the palace and will move on the duchess as soon as I'm ready. Tell Caraway we'll fulfil our end of the deal soon enough.  
>Quistis<em>

She looked up from the letter, ignoring the death-glare of the duchess and turning her head to catch the gaze of Leonard Nerva. The man stood there at the back of the room, staring back at her with an expression of total contentment, and she could see the pure hunger in his eyes. She forced herself to break that poisonous look and go back to the ominously silent Li Nuo. Somehow the silence was worse than the screaming rage. "It's fake."

"We found it in your rooms, the room I _gave_ to you, as a guest."

_Fuck. It. _"As a prisoner. And _who_ exactly gave this to you? Was it Nerva?" The slight tick in the woman's face gave her the answer. "Your grace you've been badly fooled by this man."

"He's served me well, served me _loyally_ for years, and you won't insult him in my hearing again I promise you that."

She could feel the anger slipping away from her, and below it the blue-hued power that inevitably came with it. If she lost control, here and now, that would be the end of it she knew. Whether she survived the fight she would have given up, given in to the emotional little girl inside herself, and Quistis Trepe would not allow that. "Sorceress Cultists are active in your city, your grace. That man standing behind you with a knife is likely one of them and is trying to make you do something you'll regret-"

"Something I'll _regret?_ The only thing I don't regret it locking you up when I had the chance!" She leaned forward on the seat, her hands red as they gripped the armrests of the gilded seat. "You're going to tell me what this deal is you have with that rat in Deling, and your plans for me here."

"Or?" She hadn't meant to say it, but she could feel the anger leaking out. It would feel so good to just let go. She hadn't had an outlet for the Blue power since the Second War had ended and this strutting peacock and her guards were simply begging to be- _NO!_

"Or you'll find out how Dollet treats her enemies." Her eyes flicked sideways. "Take her away." Back to Quistis. "She isn't to leave her room. Let her rot there until she feels like talking."

She let herself be led out by Nerva and Jordin (_of course, who else)_ and didn't even have the energy left to shudder as his hand wrapped around her shoulder. She felt like she had just been on trial, and had lost her final appeal.

If there really was a Hyne, she was in His hands now.

* * *

><p>It was a shrine to Sorceresses, bizarre and obsessed beyond anything Nida had expected to see. He had come through the door to find himself at the top of a staircase built from what felt (and creaked) like random planks of wood painted white. The entire room sloped down as if the bottom had been bug out of the building, but he couldn't smell anything like uprooted soil. Down at the centre he could see the pure white paint scuffed with boot-marks and dirt. A dozen people were already there, kneeling down at the statue in the centre. And that was what got his attention and made him shiver inside his dirty coat.<p>

It was made of chicken-wire or something like it. As if someone had taken a woman and wrapped her up in some twisted version of mummification and then somehow removed her and left beyond the thin steel ropes. As he moved down towards it strange reflections moved inside it, and as he got closer Nida saw another shape, inside the woman. He couldn't quite make it out but somehow he knew with absolute certainty that it was a smaller woman nested inside, with another inside that like the dolls he had seen in toy-store windows. Of the outermost figure, wings twisted off to either side, wrapped in cabling and lights that made them glow like a patchwork angel. Of course there was a halo too. He caught one of the kneelers glancing up at him as he passed and nodded a greeting, like they were just two neophytes meeting in a church and not blood-enemies passing within knifing distance of each other.

"Nice, isn't it?"

Nida turned to see a man staring rapturously at the jagged sculpture. He was dressed normally, no robes or tattoos like some younger cultists liked to wear. "We have nothing like this in Balamab. I came here to worship properly." That had seemed safest at the time. He didn't know any other place well enough to pass as a native.

There was nothing to differentiate this man from any other he might have passed on the way here, except the eyes shined with the same hard light Nida had seen in the mother earlier. It spoke of some harsh certainty that he seemed to know. Nida might not have been there at all for all the attention he paid. He talked about the statue, about the place they had with it. Out of the mass of apocrypha and half-butchered scripture Nida heard again about the _true – _the man emphasised the true – followers of Hyne. Sorceresses walked among us like angels to cleanse the world and etcetera etcetera. He'd heard it all before from a thousand reports and the hardest part was remembering to nod at the right places. It was only when a few words were kicked out that the soft-spoken fanatic got his full attention.

"-one step closer to spreading the true word after the ice-queen was locked away for that blasphemy, praise Her."

_Disdain. Contempt._

At least this time Shiva wasn't directing it at him. Nida coughed and interrupted the man mid-speech. He looked nonplussed, but then every cultist Nida had ever had contact with seemed to love the sound of their own voice. "Sorry but I just arrived…what happened?" He listened with growing trepidation and worry as the man launched into a whole new speil, the fanatic light in his eyes seeming to grow as he spat out the words. The ice-queen was Quistis of course. For some reason they seemed unable to use the Gang's names, instead resorting to fairy-tale nicknames. _Stay in bed or the lion will rip you apart and the ice-queen will freeze your blood in your body._ For all his talking and bluster the man's message was short on information, and Nida felt a little despair settle on him as he fought through the bullshit to hear what had happened in the seaside town. Apparently the duchess had wasted no time announcing the SeeD plot to her subjects. That would make things harder. He made his excuses as fast as he could to the man, looking back once at the statue. He couldn't quite put his finger on what about it disturbed him. Maybe the image of the women trapped inside each other, able to see out but still slaves to the one on the outside. He put it out of his mind as he walked out, whatever scripture the cultists had. "See you on the road." He reached out a hand and the other man gripped it automatically.

_DANGER_

The contact was like electricity and Shiva's warning came far too late as the man's hand closed around Nida's like a steel grip. He could see other cultists standing around turning to look at him as the man opened his mouth and bellowed like an ox.

"_IT'S HIM! HE HAS IT! HE'S THE ONE!"_

_Flee!_

She didn't have to tell him. In one smooth motion Nida grabbed the enclosing hand and pulled forward as hard as he could while his pivoted the rest of his body sideways. The cultist tottered for a moment at the unexpected strength in the man before pitching onto the stairs. Nida didn't wait to hear the crack, but was already running out, away, anywhere but the white room filled with men and women out for blood. _It was a trap._ His mind worked overtime as he ran away from the light and back towards the dark areas of the warehouse where he could try to hide before he found the exit. How else to explain what the man had shouted. Somehow they had been expecting him or someone like him. _But how had he known._

_Connection._

Something the GF couldn't put into words. Nida felt woozy as his vision was suddenly obscured by points of light connecting. An image of two people, and one of them had a bright blue point in its head that sent out tendrils across the whole body. When the two images touched hands a spark formed between them. He got her meaning then. _The man had seen Shiva somehow._ But there was no way that could possibly be true. Magic worked through Guardian Forces, it was the entire foundation of the junction system, what little they truly understood of the whole process. There were a couple of aberrant strains that hadn't been explored; Quistis and Rinoa refused to submit to tests about their Blue magic and Sorcery, but the laws they had hammered out were like steel beams, unyielding: You _couldn't_ channel materialise para-magic without a Guardian Force. Yet somehow the man had _seen_ Shiva in his skull.

_Worries. Unknown. Abscond._

"I know, I _know."_ The dark gloom of the outer layers of the hidden cathedral hid him well enough, but he could hear shouts and see bobbing lights through holes in the distance. He could practically feel the anger radiating from them. He wondered how he would have reacted if _his_ messiah had came down to earth, all prophecies fulfilled, only to be cut down by a group of strangers. _Now isn't the time to emphasise with the crazies, Nida._

"We know you're in here."

He kept dead silent. The voice had an almost musical tone to it and was perfectly calm, as if the speaker were simply talking about the weather, instead of hunting down a human being. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere and it made the skin on the back of his neck stand up.

"I don't know who you are but I know who you're not. I'd hoped for Zell to come in himself but obviously he's smarter than I thought. Let's make a deal."

If he called out he'd be killed.

"Give us the creature and we'll let you go. The Guardian Force."

Shiva's anger arrived in his head like a blast of ice sent through his bones. He didn't need her to tell him. He'd die here, cold and alone, before he gave up the GF to these madmen. Even if she simply sat in a cultist's skull and refused to manifest, the magic they could channel would cause untold havoc, and if they found someone strong-willed enough to force her into action the horror they could bring about would be… _He can't possibly believe I'd give her up. He's stalling. GO!_

He crawled off as quickly as he dared. He'd lost his sense of direction but he was almost certain to hit the end of the maze eventually. Even if all else failed he could just move away from the light and he would eventually find the door. How unintuitive.

"_Found you!"_

He ducked, and it saved his life. The cultist had spoken too soon, in arrogance, and the blade of the weapon – not even a weapon, just a sharpened metal sheet on the end of a wooden stick – sailed over his head and buried itself in the drywall. For a second the cultist and the SeeD stared at each other as the man tried to tug his weapon out of the wall, and then Nida' drove his fist as hard as he could into his nose. Blood gushed out and he was already running past the now-screaming man as other voices called out in alarm and anger. He was trapped in a nightmare and he couldn't find his way out. His only chance was for the other cultists in pursuit to be as stupid as the one he had laid out on the floor.

Unfortunately, they weren't. He didn't see it, merely felt it, as suddenly the air in front of him gained form and solidified and rushed forward to meet his stomach. The breath roared out of him and he could feel Shiva trying to send him worried thoughts as he folded up onto the ground and lay there coughing. He could taste copper on his lips as the shadow darkened and stepped out from the wall and became a man that planted a boot solidly on his ribcage.

"You should have listened."

He stared up at the man, who in return stared down and idly spun a knife in his fingers like some kind of impromptu magic trick for Nida's amusement. The man in black sighed, seemingly more disappointed than anything else, as the commotion and voices behind him became quieter and quieter, eventually fading away entirely to give way to the sound of footsteps.

"Is it him?" Laid down on the ground, Nida couldn't see the new speaker, but it carried the tone of voice that had the total expectation of being obeyed. He tried to twist his neck to see but at the slightest shift of his head the man in black stopped spinning his knife and stared down at him. Nida didn't need to hear the words to know a wrong move and that knife would fly down into his skull. He stopped moving.

"It's him. If you wanted Dincht you should have made the prize sweeter. This is just some underling."

When the voice of command spoke again the expectation had been replaced with wry amusement. "Why no, this isn't an underling at all. Mr Nida, it's a surprise to see you outside of the hallowed halls of Balamb. Did you get cabin fever? No no, don't get up." Nida couldn't place the voice. It sounded familiar, like he'd heard it long ago in the past. The way he said Balamb with that venom made random connections but he couldn't quite pin it down. "Well?" the voice barked. The light above whirled around him as more figures moved into the room. He felt faint, like there was something besides the foot pressing down onto his chest, and finally the speaker moved into view and he got a look at the man. It was no-one he knew. "Remove it from him. Now."

He tried to fight back but his thoughts ran away from him like mist, and his efforts were feeble at most. He could vaguely feel Shiva shouting at him to _fight, aggress, _but he didn't even have the energy to move his hand, and he could only dimly hear the voices speaking above him. It sounded tense, just short of hostility.

"…back to the palace before…"

"…unnecessary risk…SeeD will…angrier than you want."

"What, losing…nerve Kettil? We only need…can begin."

"You…not what I meant, Aimsland."

"A glorious dawn awaits."

The voices faded away as he descended into darkness, and the last thing he would remember seeing was a pair of blue eyes staring into his. When he awoke he was covered in seawater as Zell poured it over his face. It felt like he had been asleep for milliseconds, but a look at the horizon and the dawning sun told him it had been much, much longer. There was a silence around him, and for a moment he couldn't place it. When it came he realised what it meant, and his stomach ran cold when he realised that the quietness he felt was the lack of something that really, really should have been there.

Shiva was gone.

But even as he realised he looked up at the skyline and saw that the oranges and reds he had taken to be the sunrise weren't. Nida saw the flames licking at the palace and knew that somehow things were worse. As usual, he was utterly correct.


	19. Soldier Man

She lay there staring at the ceiling like a coma victim. She had been reduced from the whole world to one small cage to strut around in. Then, when the cage had finally been expanded she had walked around for such little time before it had been shrunk even more, and she had been reduced to this, one solitary room. Four walls, a floor and a ceiling. Precious little else.

Locked away from the world Quistis Trepe retreated into her own mind, and the soft cool memories it contained. She had always wanted to believe her mind as a cool logical engine, a place for everything and everything in its like. Boxes and containers and glass cabinets each with their own memories that she could take out and look at whenever she wanted. But now someone had walked in and strewn the boxes around, tipping their contents onto the floor and smashing the glass and sweeping the shards around until she couldn't think straight. Worse still she dared not clean up because there were other, darker things mixed in among the rubble and she didn't dare start fixing everything for risk of picking up something she wanted buried.

_Mommy look what I can do._

She was curled up on the bed, trying to hold in tears. Originally of humiliation, despair they had turned into pure anger, anger that sent off blue sparks as it saturated her mind and _demanded_ to make itself heard. Anger like she hadn't felt since the day in Ultimecia's insane castle, walking through architecture that it hurt to look at and fighting creatures that had shifted form and strengths as they had fought them. There had been a wild and crazy joy to fighting there, in that place. In Timber and in Deling and in Dollet they had held back even as they had scythed through their enemies like butter for fear of damaging something they shouldn't have, as the GFs burned in their mind and let them do things they wouldn't have dreamed possible before. Direct powers that could have charred swathes of countryside to nothing and channel energies that could have powered cities for weeks. Until one glorious day they had found themselves at the end of time, and nothing and no-one to stop them. They had gone there for love and friendship and to Save The World but there wasn't one of them who at one point or another hadn't looked down at themselves and wondered; _exactly how strong am I?_ They had found out that day, and in the aftermath and Aftermath they had silently looked at each other and made the decision to lock away the GFs forever. Absolute power corrupted absolutely, and was as addictive as any mainlined drug. She had wondered what the others thought of her and Rinoa, the only two left capable of using the forces they had locked away. Were they jealous? She hadn't said it then, but she would have traded her azure power for their lack any day of the week. They could go through life unafraid that one wrong thought or angry gesture would lash out and kill, but she had always worried, ever since that day in the Pandora, whether one day people would look at her the same way she had looked up at Ultimecia.

_What are you some kind_

As some kind of monster.

_some kind of monster?_

In the distance she could hear gunshots, but lost in her own past the sound didn't get through to her mind.

* * *

><p><em>Mommy, look what I can do.<em>

_It hadn't been 'mommy' at the start. She was older than that, mentally if not physically. At first it had been so hard. The orphanage may have been made out of cold stone but the hearts that had lived in it had burned brightly to keep it warm even on a winter's night. As the boat had slowly surged away from the dockland she had looked back and seen Matron and Uncle Cid standing there on the shore. Cid was waving gently but Matron had her hand over her mouth and looked like she was shaking. Both of them were holding hands, and little Quistis Trepe wondered whether she was too cold. Finally the old buildings had receded under the horizon like a wave had washed over them, and only the sea lay behind her. She felt a warm hand on her shoulder and turned back to her new mother and leaned against her. She had a pretty name._

_It had been pretty at first. For a few weeks there had been nervousness and a certain troubled awkwardness caused by the introduction into a family of someone old enough to know she was adopted, but that faded away quickly and she was left in the warm glow that only came from people who unconditionally loved each other and had room in their hearts for another. They'd went on trips together and walked through streets as Quisty had stared in at the windows, amazed by how much _stuff_ was in the world. They had gone down the main street and it was close enough to Christmas that all the town was dressed for the occasion, and she had looked into the window at the bright and sparkling decorations and wanted to reach inside to pick one from the tree. Dad had laughed and ruffled her hair and told her she was the prettiest decoration they needed. They'd walked away happy, but he hadn't noticed the faint glow in her eye, or the smoke coming from the glass wall where her hand had almost melted through it._

_Like a car with a loose axel, time only made it worse and worse until the whole thing fell off and burned. They had sent her to school and they had taken one look at her inquisitive eyes and the forwarding note given to her mom by Matron Edea Kramer and put her higher than they should have. She was the smallest kid in the class and none of the other students were like Squall or Irvine or Zell. Plenty of them had been like Seifer though, and it was one of them who had been the first to go too far and find out what Quistis Trepe thought of bullies. They'd sent her home with a note and a stern warning, not a little confused at how the tiny little blonde girl had made the bigger boy cry so hard. They hadn't noticed the slightly burning mark her slap had left on his face. Looking back dispassionately as an adult she saw how long they had tried to love her for, and how desperately they had tried to ignore it. But finally they had caught her, out there in the field with eyes glowing like the ocean and the blue fire twisting away from her palms and up into the air. She had turned to her mom and for one second in her life she had been a true child like she never had been back at the orphanage, bursting with pride for the clever thing she could do and eager to show her parents, make them proud._

Mommy, look what I can do!

_A half-second as she had looked around had been all it took for her new world to collapse in on itself as she stared at her mother and father and saw them, clutching each other like they were looking not at their young adopted child but at some onrushing tsunami. The power had left her then but it had already been too late and she had looked down, and her father had looked up at her with fear in his eyes and_

What are you some kind of monster?

_she had known, even if the entire process had taken weeks, that she would be returning across the ocean to the house of stone. When she finally found herself back there, back by the cold sea, at least she knew that the body she leant into would never push her away._

You'll always have a place here with me Quisty, always, _Matron had said. Quistis had felt the woman take a deep breath, and the next few words from her mouth had placed her on the path she would walk for the rest of her life. Like she had always known girl like her would never be able to find a normal life, that instead an abnormal one would be the best thing that could be done for the small sad girl with gold in her hair and deep blue eyes. _I know a place that you could go.

_The next month, she had travelled across the ocean again, to a small island in the middle of the word._

_Balamb, and the garden at its heart._

_She had found home._

* * *

><p>It took her a second to realise that the man hadn't knocked, hadn't even bothered to cough politely before he barged in. She emerged from her memories like a sailor gasping for air after having fallen overboard, and it took a second before she fully registered the man before her.<p>

"-SAID _UP_, YOU BITCH!"

"I-"

That was as far as she got as the man's rifle came around and slammed across the back of her skull. Halfway to standing up, she stumbled and went down hard against the wooden frame of the bed. She had a moment to think in wonderment _he hit me _before she looked up at the attacker and noticed him fully. Noticed he was one of the Dollet kitchen staff she'd occasionally seen walking around the palace. Noticed how nervous he looked as he shifted the rifle and looked down at her. Noticed the tears in his eyes. "What's going on?" _Are we under attack?_

Another man was looking at her nervously from the door and flinched as he looked at her. There was nothing about him that said competency to her. "Watch out for that seed shit they all use."

"I got this one. Get _up!"_ the cook screamed at her.

She allowed herself to be dragged to her feet, still reeling a little from the blow from the rifle-butt, and was half-walked half-pulled into the corridor outside her room, where instantly her blood ran cold. _My God, what happened here?_

The sight before her instantly made more sense and less sense. The walls of the palace they marched her through looked like they had been decorated with blood, like a painter had taken a few half-hearted swipes with a brush and then moved on. She could smell the coppery stench of the stuff in her nostrils and combined with her shaking head made her want to throw up. She wanted to toss the man off her arm but resisted the urge. He looked on the brink of either breaking down and crying or breaking down and spraying wildly with the riddle he clearly had only passing familiarity with. The effect on him seemed to intensify as they passed a doorway, and she got a quick glance through into a ballroom filled with white sheets. She knew what was under them.

"Who did this?"

She heard the bitter laugh of the man dragging her and realised she had spoken out loud. It all came together before he spoke and she realised how close she was to simply being killed there, on the spot, by this small cook who someone had handed a rifle and told to fetch the SeeD. His voice was barely comprehensible under his grief, the thick accent coming through like fog in his mouth. "You askin' me that you vicious bitch? _JUST GET MOVING!_"

So she moved. What else could she do?

The doors of the throne-room stood before her, and she wondered if she would leave alive.

* * *

><p>"We fucked up real bad."<p>

To both their surprises, it was Zell who had spoken. Nida had finished retching up what little his stomach contained into the sea and now the pair of SeeDs stood looking grimly at the sky, feeling not a little useless. They were used to being in the thick of the action, causing or preventing it. Now they both stood there in the street and could only be two more faces in a crowd of thousands that were walking up the hill towards the fire. Some of the more prudent, smarter, or just plain better of the group carried buckets or bandages or construction equipment. Many only came with inquisitive eyes and the wish to know _what the hell is going on?_

Nida was wondering the same, and Zell's urgent yet quiet statement only made him nervous. "Pull yourself together you idiot." When he looked across at the blonde martial-artist he realised how wrong he had been. Zell wasn't panicking. Zell was _furious._

"Steal our friends, steal our GFs." He spat onto the side of the road. "Hyne knows gonna be hell to pay when we find them man."

Nida couldn't express how he felt. Somehow drained and yet not, like there was a hole inside himself that refused to fill up. He shook the feeling out of his head and instead tried to grab the nearest person he saw running _down_ the hill, away from the palace. "Hey, _hey,_ what's happening up there?"

The look the man gave him was filled with suspicion and it took Nida a moment to notice it wasn't directed at him, but at the world in general. It was a broad paranoia he had seen before, but only in the aftermath of civil wars and anarchy. It was the look of a man that trusted no-one. "SeeD man, SeeD attacked the palace! They're killin' everyone!" The man twisted free and ran down the hill, leaving Nida staring dumbly after him.

"Are you _kidding?_" Zell blurted in frank disbelief.

"I don't think he was." He could see the word spreading as more and more people coming down the hill met the crowd going up it, and the word bounced from person to person like an electric spark. "I think we need to find a way to get up there." Inside he was raging at himself. There was no possible way to get inside. The Cultists knew who he was, they knew who Zell was. There was no possible way any of this was a coincidence. "We need to do something about this. What the _hell_ can we do about this?"

Zell rubbed his face as if he was awakening from a dream. He stared up at the palace on the skyline with something between worry and resignation. "I got no clue."

_We came out here on a whim. Two men looking to be heroes and rescuing the damsel in distress from the evil lord. Now here we stand, two dumb bastards staring at the sky with no backup, no way of contacting Garden, and a stolen Guardian Force _.

"We really did fuck this one up real bad."

"We gotta go."

Nida had noticed when Zell was worried he tended to speak like the kid he used to be, rather than the man he had grown up into. "What?"

"We gotta get to Deling and tell Xu and the others."

For a moment Nida was tempted to agree, before he noticed something. "Zell, they're going to know soon enough." He pointed away and Zell followed his finger to see the TV crew setting up. He cursed. Even if Dollet didn't have access to the Estharian satellite system – Laguna had suggested setting up a terminal there but Xu and Quistis had overruled him with almost prescient reasoning – they still had that giant eyesore of a communication tower and enough wattage to beam halfway across the planet.

"God _damnit."_

* * *

><p>Absolute understanding came within seconds of entering the room. The blinders of her abrupt awakening were free from her eyes and her mind was working almost supernaturally fast as the heavy oaken doors slammed shut behind her and she surveyed the room before her.<p>

The room was half-full of people, but only half of those people were alive. White sheets covered up lumpen shapes on the floor that could only be bodies, red patches staining them like some obscene polka-dot pattern. Thin trails and spatters covered the ground and she recognised them for cuts made by knives, so fast the swings had went through the bodies clean and the blood had flew off the blades to make those sweeping curves and patterns across the floor. She looked back up and towards the back of the room. The throne was empty but much, much redder than it had been. The gilded seat was spattered bloodstains and the padded leather of the back had ragged holes in it. Without having to be told Quistis knew that the duchess had died in that chair. A phrase from her SeeD lectures came back to her, some old Centran motto, and she had to bite her lip to keep it from escaping her lips.

_Sic simper tyrannis, Nuo._

She chided herself for the thought as soon as it came out. She was helped in this by the next thing she saw. Three body-bags, almost hidden behind a pillar, in the corner of the room and surrounded by more men than the rest. The two on either side were considerably smaller than the one in the middle.

_Oh God no._

"They were just kids." One of the guards looked around when she spoke, surprised she had spoken. Now she knew why the cook had been crying. Not for the duchess. The woman had been liked by her people but never loved. The children had been angels. "They were just _kids._" She could feel the anger boiling up and this time she did nothing to stop it, as she looked about the room and saw that only a few of them were Dollet soldiers. The rest looked to be civilians, or palace staff. All of the still-living Dollet soldiers had eyes that seemed somehow les traumatised, less affected than the staff by the carnage before them. All of them wore an armband made out of crudely torn cloth.

Wings and circles.

"Can't let you do that Ms Trepe."

Quistis felt the arm on her shoulder and turned blue eyes on the man, blue eyes shining so brightly she could see the hue they cast on his skin, reflecting from the dusty black leathers and shining knives hanging from his belt. One of them was held almost gently in the hand not on her shoulder. His voice was almost gentle as he spoke. "Stop it ma'am, or I'll have to stop _you_. I'm fast enough." Somehow she believed him. She gave up, and felt the power leech from her bones as she did so. She could hear anger and shouts and angry cries from those Dollet soldiers still in the room. The cultists just stared at her in barely-concealed hatred. When the next person in the room spoke she somehow didn't have the strength to conjure up emotion. Not to face that shark-like grin.

Leonard Nerva smiled as he walked across the hall towards him. His boots left bloody footprints across the marble and he made no effort to avoid stepping in the pools he passed on the way, renewing his bloody passage across the throne-room floor. "Kettil, take this SeeD assassin down to the dungeons. The sick killer of our precious duchess and her children won't be going anywhere anytime soon." He looked into her eyes and in them she saw triumph, a man who felt safe enough to gloat. He leaned forward and as his mouth faced her face she could almost imagine she could taste blood on his breath. Something long and slim slipped out from underneath his shirt and she could see the shining circular emblem that marked him as a Sorceress Cultist. _Should have known, known from the first time I saw him on that dockside. _She had been such a fool. "I never forgot the name on my expulsion papers, Ms Trepe." He leaned back again and again they were staring at each other. The smirking ex-SeeD and the broken headmistress. "Something to dwell on, while we hunt down the other two brave adventurers flitting around the city." He smiled when her fatigue allowed her reaction to slip through. "Of course I knew. You think we didn't know your every movement? I'd say it paid off."

"You people aren't going to get away with this."

He smiled encouragingly, like a teacher to a student who has finally, after hours of effort, produced the answer he desired.

"Sure we are."

* * *

><p>The squared off against each other through the steel bars, and the scarlet red sash that tied his wrists. Even if it was purely ceremonial and symbolic, the cotton cloth must have burned against his wrists when they moved against his skin. To anyone who visited it screamed <em>traitor, <em>but to her it looked like no hardship at all.

"I'm here to ask…" she trailed off as all the words fled from her mind. Squall had stopped the car outside the military barracks and asked her quietly _are you sure?_, knowing the promise they had made and releasing her from it. She had simply and nodded as they had climbed out. He was waiting for her there now she knew, and drew strength from it. He'd always be there.

_Ask about any contact you still had with anti-Seed forces in Deling._

_Ask if any sorceress cultists came to you for shelter when Edea-Ultimecia fell._

_Ask if any of your old army buddies are, shall we say, 'sympathetic' toward them._

_Ask if you'll give us information on exactly what happened to all the missing guns and tanks at the end of the 2SW._

None of that came out though.

Rinoa stared through the bars at her father like a child at the zoo. The room wasn't even a prison-cell, just the commandant's old office with a door ripped straight from the brig and welded on. If she leaned forward enough she could almost think they weren't there. _Behold the captive Galbadian General in his native environment. _"I'm here to ask why."

Fury Caraway adjusted the jacket he was wearing, as if trying to keep out some imaginary wind she had brought in with her. "Why what, Rin?"

Just hearing his voice after all the years made her want to pick up something and throw it at him. The too-smooth and patronising tones that made every sentence re-arrange itself in the air into Father Knows Best. She hated that voice, the very sound of it. Had hated it ever since her mother had died and Rinoa Heartilly had spent the rest of her childhood walking around the mansion that she had once been part of a family in. "Why everything," she spat out.

"Everything I did I did for us," Caraway replied calmly. The years had taken their toll on him in blood and life. He stood there on the other side of the steel like some kind of ghost, or a drawing that someone had carelessly spilled water over. All the colour had been washed out of the man, leaving behind a shell. Whatever process his wife's death had started, the end of the War had taken from him.

She stared at him open-mouthed and finally found the words. "Us? _Us? _You…you conquered half the world and killed all those people for _us!"_ _How dare you try and appeal to me now._

Still he just stood there like a man making a speech. There was no emotion in his words. "I just wanted to keep you safe. It's a harsh world out there Rin, and-"

"_DON'T YOU THINK I KNOW THAT!"_ she screamed at him. She could only imagine what the guards outside would think of what they were hearing. Maybe even Squall had heard. "I went…the things I've seen…you think I don't _know_ that?"

"I wanted to keep you _out_ of all that Rin." Something approaching emotion flickered across his face. "Not drag you further into it. That SeeD boy-"

"My husband."

He nodded, as if being told some new piece of information. "He doesn't understand. None of them do. They think the world is run logically."

Even as she could feel his words begin to wash over her like a tide she found herself encouraging him. "And you know better?"

"People hate each other Rin. So long as we live like this, wrapped up in our own little cities scattered across the globe, we'll always be at each other's throats."

"I'll never believe that."

"I know. But your opinion doesn't matter. Neither does Squall's, or mine anymore. It's Li Nuo and people like her that decide how the world is. Petty people with petty grievances with too much power."

"Laguna's one of those people. He's nothing like you."

Caraway shook his head sadly. "The president doesn't have the strength to enforce his will on others. Seagill, now, he would have had the world bowing to Esthar in the name of peace. But not Loire."

"_We'll_ do it then. Me and Squall and the others. SeeD can make the world a better place and I'll be there to help them."

"Maybe," Caraway admitted. "But are you willing to go all the way to make it real? You'll have to learn the lesson your predecessors didn't."

"My pred…you mean sorceresses?"

"Adel was stupid, all she wanted was power. From what I hear, Ultimecia at least aimed higher, a universe that ticked to her own heartbeat. Edea Kramer wanted a house by the sea and children she could watch grow up. But they all got what they wanted Rin, even if you and your SeeD b…husband and his friends came and threw them down. You have all that power Rinoa, if only you wanted to use it. You could make your dream reality and no one could stop you. That's what a Sorceress is."

"They…Adel and Ultimecia…they were monsters. We stopped them. I'll never become like them, never."

_But you could, Rin. You could make the world bow down before you if you wanted. Power layered on power and all you need to do if reach deep inside yourself and grasp it. Walk outside and call for those cultists and they would all come running with a smile. Unite the world underneath you and _make_ that utopia you always wanted. A Sorceress-Queen and her loyal knight._

She shuddered and almost gasped as the thoughts ran through her. She'd never come close to anything like it before, almost as if they weren't her thoughts at all. She knew the power she had, had used small portions of it herself during the Second War and seen it used fully in the final battle against the insane Ultimecia. She had felt the power coursing through her bones and knew how _good_ it felt when it did. She knew that it wasn't a door that could ever safely be opened.

Not for long, at least.

He broke out of his reverie and looked her in the eyes. He smiled at her then, and for a moment she could see the man he had been, the man who had still loved in. Love that had been twisted by his wife's death into something cold and stifling. "That's the lesson I'm talking about Rin. No matter how noble your dream is someone else will come and smash it down. My dream was a world you could have grew up in safely. A world united under Galbadia might have been rough but it would have been better, I know it." He gestured around at his bars. "Instead Dollet is run by a madwoman and Esthar sits across the ocean doing nothing but slapping us down when we try and rise up. Dozens of towns scattered across the world and nothing to keep them in order. Was what I wanted for you so bad?"

_Forests burned and towns ripped out of the bedrock to rummage out what few rebels there ever were. Half a world kept in fear of tank tracks in the night and soldiers every ten steps because it wasn't enough for Galbadia to simply own you, you had to _know_ they owned you. _"Yes." She took a step back. She recalled something Xu had muttered, back when they had been poring over tables and charts in the aftermath of the Second War. They'd both been a little tipsy and Xu had let her mask slip just enough to say what she _really_ thought. Rinoa had known then that for all she may not entirely have liked the woman, the thin dark woman was no emotionless robot.

_Caraway would have made all the world sing in tune. But we'd have been singing in chains, and the song would have been droning nonsense._

He gave a small little smile as she repeated it then. "Such a ruthless woman. I suppose she got it from her father."

The urge came and passed; _you knew her father?_ But that wasn't why she was here. She stared into her father's eyes. "I can't…" She tried to grope for words but none came. "I can't think like that. Like you. Not ever."

"I know. You're a much better person than I ever was, kiddo. I'm sorry it ended like this."

She paused for a second, and when she answered she knew it was the truth. "I'm sorry too dad."

She turned and left then, pushing open the steel door before her and going back into the cold air of Deling. She felt something smooth and warm brush alongside her and looked to see Squall there beside her.

"How did it go? Did you get answers."

She spared a glance backward as they walked off. The dull gray of the building looked incongruous and clashing against the white snow that covered everything else. Like a remnant from another word, ugly and unneeded. "Yeah," she said sadly. "I did."

"Let's go home." He kissed her gently on the forehead. "I'm here for you."

_I love him so much._ "I know." She smiled, as if being in the outside air was erasing the grim fog of inside the barracks. "Let's get back to the mansion." _Irvine and Selphie and Xu will be there to greet us, and we'll all sit down and talk about what we're going to do next. We'll find the murderers and the cult and shut them down, and we'll all go back to Balamb heroes, and get on with our lives. We'll travel the world and make it safe, but a peace we'll all have a place in, and not just as cog's in one man's vision._

But it wasn't Selphie or Irvine or even Xu waiting for them there, it was Seifer. Her heart sunk as she saw the expression on the blonde man's face, and she knew whatever dreams they had would have to wait another day.


	20. War

To Rinoa seeing Squall and Seifer standing in the same room without the temperature plummeting towards sub-zero was something of a miracle. Even working in the same city on the same job there was an undercurrent of tension that would never vanish. She would have smiled, if the situation that had brought it about hadn't been so absurd

"I don't believe this is going on, y'know? Aren't we supposed to be around to stop stuff like this from happening?"

Raijin seemed to be the only one having trouble accepting the news as true, even though the television in the mansion they stood before had been broadcasting for minutes already. It felt like they'd been staring for hours. "I think it's happening without us," she whispered as the newscaster droned on before them. With the fall of Adel's Tomb Dollet had suddenly found itself back in possession of the only comm. tower on the continent, and they must have been feeding power from the entire city into it, the program had overridden the Galbadian's own reporting so quickly and clearly.

"Loire could shut this crap down cold if we asked," Seifer muttered. Esthar's control of space was still absolute. Even simply turning the Tomb back on would have done it.

"Would he?" She thought back to what Caraway had said – _he isn't strong enough – _and knew her words were right as she said them, and met the enquiring gaze of Seifer with her own. "I don't think he'd make the rest of the world suffer just to make us feel better."

"I don't know about you Rinoa but I'm feeling pretty goddamn wretched." Irvine was staring at the screen intensely. There was a fire burning in the long drawing room, a scene that would have been homely and warming under any other circumstances. The images moving across the screen cast light across the watchers and they all listened as the facts and pictures were repeated, as they had been doing since Seifer had called them all into the room and turned it on.

"_-standing here before a grieving populace as they mourn the loss of their brave leader. The soldiers who managed to turn back the assault and capture one of the attackers are back inside the palace now but they _did_ confirm that Li Nuo, the duchess of Dollet, and her niece and nephew have been killed by an assassination team led by the SeeD mercenary force."_

The image switched back to something that had obviously played earlier, and Squall felt Rinoa's hand tighten on his as a familiar face appeared on the screen. The smile was missing, and the eyes were downcast and mournful, but something of Leonard Nerva's nature seemed to shine through the television at them. As if he knew they were watching, and the whole show was for their benefit.

"_We had absolutely no warning. Only a few of the guard survived, unfortunately the rest of us arrived too late to stop the SeeDs from…I'm sorry."_ The image of the man wiped a single tear from his eye. As he raised his hand to do so the armband there was clearly visible, the circled wings in white.

"That son of a bitch," Seifer said in wonderment.

"_At least some justice will be done. They attacked fast but we reacted faster, and the leader of the assassins was captured alive and unharmed."_ He looked into the camera with an expression of strength, purpose, and total dedication and honesty. A masterful sham. _"This attack wasn't made by soldiers but by cowards. Cowards afraid that Dollet was going to break free from the chains imposed on it by SeeD and those who think like them, those afraid that God-fearing men and women would rise up and claim their city for themselves again. Dollet will become a beacon for those who seek real freedom, the freedom to make their own choices and pray to their own gods, and not the gray silent world that SeeD wishes for. They were afraid of us before. Well, they have something to be afraid of now. The duke will stop at nothing to make sure that the masterminds behind this heinous act are hunted down and made to pay, whether that be some splinter faction of one of the three Gardens or commander Squall Leonhart himself. If the Archangel herself were to appear before me now, we would swear to it."_

The camera turned away from Nerva back to the reporter, doing her best to nod sombrely to the man's words while hiding the excitement in her eye. She turned back in the direction of the screen and went on talking, but they tuned her out as useless noise.

"Exactly who is the new duke?" Seifer asked as they thought through what they had just seen.

Fujin shifted in her seat and looked up. "Alec Selmy-Nuo, a cousin. Young."

The blonde man shook his head. "So that clears up who's really running the show down there. Shit."

Seifer snorted in amusement, but Squall couldn't see how it was funny. He could see the sideways glances and knew that sooner or later they would look to him for leadership. Even if he hadn't had the title they would have done it anyway, he knew. For some reason even during the Second War he'd found himself surrounded by people more skilful, smarter or stronger than he was, and they had all looked to him for orders. At first he had been cruel and dismissive. Then after the War he had been deathly afraid that he would let them down. Now somehow he had become that man for real, rather than only in people's minds. It no longer terrified him. He pushed off from the table he had been leaning against and addressed the room. Even Seifer was listening. "I know we're all upset about this. It's been a long few months here and things haven't gone as well as we had hoped."

"A goddamn understatement," someone muttered. Squall couldn't place a voice. He went on.

"I want everyone to go and get some rest. We're not going to be getting much sleep from here on out. When we come back to this room tomorrow I want ideas, and I want plans. Anything you can think of, anything you can bring to the table. No idea too stupid." He looked around the room again and saw the fire burning in the eyes of his friends and comrades. "We're not going to stand for this. Evil men have taken a country over, and this is what SeeD was built for. Even if the world turns against us. We'll get the job done. Dismissed."

It was the longest speech he had said in years, and even saying it to the relatively small crowd he felt drained. Public anything had never been his forte, let alone public speaking, and he found himself leaning back on the table as the others filed out. They were almost all silent, and on certain people's faces Squall caught the glimpses of men and women deep in thought. One face, however, was absent.

"She's not here. I looked already."

He turned to see Rinoa standing by the doorway. "Reading my mind again?"

She smiled at him. "But it's so easy." Quickly the smile turned into something else. "You don't think she's done something stupid do you?"

Squall didn't even have to think about it, only shake his head as he took Rinoa's hand. "I can't even imagine it."

* * *

><p>She could feel the blood and dirt under her fingernails but couldn't find the restraint to pull them free, as she leaned up against the ally wall, hands supporting her head against the cool brick. To a passerby she would be one more childish idle-rich that somehow still plagued the city, throwing up the remnants of last night's good time. Only a closer inspection would have shown the deep, deep channels scored into the brickwork, and the unseeing glare and clenched teeth of someone barely holding themselves together.<p>

She had heard the news and ran, ran out of the mansion as soon as she had been safely out of sight of the others. No doubt her departure would have been noticed by now but she hadn't wanted them to see her like this. She had a reputation, she had a _job_ that required her to be ice, and right now all she felt like was fire. Fire that threatened to consume her. She had walked the streets looking for something, anything to distract her, as the thoughts and urges and rage had built and built and _built_ inside her skull until finally she hadn't been able to go on, afraid any sudden movement would make it explode out of her. The cool darkness of the ally had been the first thing she had noticed. _Hide, hide and don't let anyone notice._

"You doing down there lady?"

She looked up only when something solid careened off her side and looked up to see the men staring at her. The melodic tinkling of the beer-bottle that had bounced from her ribs was the only sound in the enclosed space as the one woman stared down the three. Just three more civilians too locked up into their own little world to realise their lives meant so little. Too naïve and dumb to think anything outside the city could possibly affect them. Drunk enough to think of having a little fun with the first thing they could find, and what better than a lone woman in a dark ally. Certainly too drunk to see the way she was staring at them like a starving wolf staring at a plate of meat.

One of them seemed to be less inebriated than his friends, enough to maintain some memory of current events in his own city. "Hey, hey I recorg….recod…I _know_ this bitch! One of those seeds been wandering around." The beery glance he gave her made her skin crawl as his gaze went up and down her. "Fuckin' child-murderin-"

She couldn't find the words she needed to make them shut up. She wanted to explain, find some way to get through that haze of drunken self-righteousness, but she simply couldn't find the words as her thoughts were consumed with black rage against that smiling lunatic sitting half a continent away, holding prisoner the other half of her soul._ Quistis…_

"Huh? Whatcha sayin' you sneaky-"

She screamed and struck out, almost crushing the man's vocal cords as she grabbed him with the neck, all her training and skills reduced to the single ideal of _to inflict harm_. The man's pupils widened in shock as suddenly the small woman before him – easy pickings for him and his friends after a pretty heavy night – transformed into a snarling demon that practically through him against the wall as she leapt past him at his friends. Xu let her momentum carry her past the fallen drunk as she reached out for-

"That's enough of that."

Caught short, she was _jerked_ backwards as a hand landed on her lapel and pulled her away, her hands swiping the air in front of the men's faces instead of through their skulls.

As she sat breathing heavily on the ground of the ally she heard rather than saw as the interloper turned to the two men still standing, the panicked coughing of the third before them. "There are easier marks out there tonight. This is a protected area. Now fuck off. So, do you feel better now?" This last one obviously not to the men, as the sound of their footsteps ran off into the distance.

She stayed there kneeling on the ground, unwilling to turn and look up at her 'rescuer'. She knew who it was. Even if the voice had been muffled in her rage there was no-one else who spoke like that. "What the hell are you doing here Almasy." She wasn't going to show weakness, not to _him_, unless she could possibly help it.

Seifer dusted his hands down, dust cascading to the ground. "Stopping you from becoming a name on a wanted poster apparently."

Somehow she couldn't think of a reply, instead her brain served up the first piece of information it had from her reservoirs. "Deling hasn't used wanted posters in decades." A useless comment from a useless profession. She finally looked up to see a hand extended down to her.

"Must be pretty painful down there. Get up."

She stared at the gloved hand like it was something nasty. "What do you _want_ Seifer?"

He shrugged and withdrew it. "We have a group of angry and in one tall case confused soldiers who need a commander capable of thinking with a straight head. I thought I'd go find one. Have you seen one around?"

"I'm not the commander. Squall-"

"Squall is Squall," Seifer said, a tight note in his voice. "The heroic figure on horseback who makes speeches and takes the credit, fine. Don't have to like it but I'll accept it. But he's not shit without a horse under him to keep him propped up."

She ignored the implication as she stood up and faced the man, her face finally back under control to present a blank visage. Smooth and with no hint of what lies beneath. She could still feel the anger bubbling just below the surface. Ruining the drunken oaf had been some small release but compared to all the rage she had inside it was like trying to let steam out of a boiler with a pin. "Are you trying to give me advice now? That's rich coming from the man who sold his own organisation off for a song."

"You want to watch your-"

No good, too much. The mask slipped off again and fell into the darkness of the ally and suddenly she was in his face spitting mad. "No _you_ watch your mouth Almasy! I was there in Garden when G-Garden attacked. The dead…I saw their faces, you _shit._ Dozens of men and women, _good_ men and women died just so you could play soldier." She advanced on him until he was pressed up against the wall. When she spoke her voice was low and dangerous, an inferno trapped under a steel plate. "You don't get to stand here and lecture me on how to lead. Not now, not _ever!_ You…people died and you're still standing here, you smug _fuck!_ How is that justice? _How? IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOU!_" God it felt good to finally say it. Weeks of suffering his presence, taking after the commander's lead. Even Rinoa had managed to keep her emotions in check around the man, as if he had been some vital part of the machine in the city and not just another war criminal made to pay for his crimes. "Laguna and the others may see something in you worth salvaging but to me you'll always be a worthless traitor."

Seifer stood his ground, calmly staring at Xu. The man almost towered over her but the fury radiating from her made him want to shrink away. "Feel better now you've got that off your chest? Anything else you'd like to add on top of whining in the gutter like a whipped dog?"

And suddenly she knew what would make her feel better, would maybe bring some clarity back to the disaster that her life had became. Stepping back once on her heels she dropped her hands from Seifer's lapels, bunched her right up into a fist, and threw it as hard as she could right into his face.

* * *

><p>"<em>Stay with me kid. You're going to be alright."<em>

_She said it as sincerely as she could, even as her heart didn't feel it at all, a trite saying she had picked up via osmosis from the medics as they repeated it to the other patients in the corridor outside of the infirmary. She could feel the wetness seeping out from under the tightly-wrapped jacket and the woman laid down in front of her, barely more than a girl, was bleeding out onto the white marble of Garden's floor. Her eyes took on the glassy look of someone who had mercifully gone beyond pain and was now already in some other place, and merely waiting for her body to notice she had gone. Xu knew her. Her name was Sali and she had come to Garden because she had wanted to learn how to negotiate with others and teach those who refused to be taught. She had below-average grade for physical and combat classes but her academics were through the roof. Her parents had taken umbrage at her choice of educational establishment and she was staying with a friend she had made in her first year. She had stayed behind because they hadn't been able to remove all the children from the classrooms before G-Garden had struck, and she had volunteered to stay behind to look after them. She had been leading then out when they had encountered a Galbadian patrol, and had been shot three times before falling down, using the last of her strength to pry closed the classroom door and destroy the lock. Xu knew all of this and it brought her no peace as she sat there on the rough cloth mattress outside the infirmary, with a dying comrade in front of her. She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see one of the exhausted medical volunteers with a hand on her shoulder._

"_We'll do what we can." They both knew it wouldn't be enough. She watched them wheel away the girl and could only stand there staring after them, as around her SeeD tried to piece itself together from the ruin of G-Garden's attack._

"_Xu?"_

_She turned to see who was addressing her, and her eyes widened in shock. "Quistis?" It wasn't any Quistis she remembered. She barely recognised the other woman as she slid down to the floor next to her and laid her head back against the cool marble. Her clothes were ripped and torn in half a dozen places and blood-encrusted cuts dotted the flesh underneath. Her hair was bedraggled in some places and scorched in others, and the black colouring underneath her eyes sure as hell wasn't makeup. "What in Hyne's name happened to you?"_

_Quistis let out a small laugh. "Only He knows I suspect." She turned to her fellow Garden member. "We screwed it up Xu. I have no idea how but we screwed it up real bad."_

_The bottom dropped out of her stomach as she mentally ran through every possible bad situation that could have happened. There were a few. "Is everyone okay…is Squall and the others-"_

"_They're fine. But Rinoa is…" The blonde stared off into space. "I can't…I saw something I can't explain." She laughed and it sounded bitter. "All the people in G-Garden I…we all…what a waste. What a stupid waste."_

_Xu sat down next to her. They had always been friends but as Quistis had dived into her instructors duties and her own administrative and covert skills had set them on different paths they hadn't talked much. Especially not since the start of the war. Good luck staying in touch when you didn't spend more than half a day in one place. Forests didn't have mailboxes. "We'll make her pay for it," Xu assured her friend. To her surprise this didn't seem to be an answer Quistis was looking for._

"_I don't know. There was something Edea's eyes there at the end after…I don't really know." She turned and looked into Xu's eyes. Even under the fatigue and exhaustion they were as blue and clear as they had ever been. _Like emeralds._ She could have lost herself in them. "I don't hate her Xu. I don't know why but I looked up at her and I couldn't do it. Just couldn't do it."_

"_What about Seifer?"_

_She snorted. "Him I can hate fine. He got away again."_

"_Let him run. We'll chase him down." A list of names running through her head, the databank of information that she'd drilled into it over the years. She could take it out and look at it whenever she wanted, her memory trained and whipped into being as eidetic as she could make it. The list grew longer and shorter, but sometimes names were crossed out. Lives cut short before their time. There was another name, marked out next to the crossed-one. Usually it simply read 'training accident' or 'monster', but lately another name had been written on that mental list more and more. _We'll find him._ She felt a bump against her shoulder and realised after a second that Quistis was resting her head against Xu's shoulder. She could feel the other woman's warmth leaning against her."You need to go get some sleep , in a real bed. Can't have sleepy-heads on the field team." Even as she said it she realised she didn't really mean it. She liked it like this just fine._

_Quistis on her part seemed to have no objections. Sounded already half-asleep in fact. "Wish you'd been out there with us. Could have used another actual grown-up out there. You okay?"_

_She loosened the collar of her uniform. "Just trying to get a little more air, heating system's been on the blink since their garden smacked us about. Well, somebody's got to herd the rest of the kittens inside while you're out there herding the rest of the world." She didn't say the real reason. _I was asked but I turned it down. I like the dark in here Quistis, I don't think I'd survive in the sunlight. Not like you.

"_Very zen."_

"_All that paperwork gives me time to think." She was very close. Xu could feel her heartbeat against her side and dares not move so much as an inch, lest it fall away. "Quistis I-" She looked back, but suddenly the pressure against her side increased, and Xu looked over to find her friend had fallen asleep against her side. She could hear a whisper coming from the woman and leaned in gently._

"…_couldn't do it…"_

I know you couldn''re a much better person than me.

_They sat there alone as around them people scuttled back and forward trying to patch together the broken shell of Balamb Garden. Xu sat there with her friend almost laid out across her like a casualty and wondered what else could possibly come after this horrible day. Idly she realised that she was twisting a lock of Quistis' hair around her finger, the way she used to do to her own when she was nervous about something. She dropped it quickly and as she did so Quistis shifted against her in her sleep. Xu's skin crawled. Garden's innards may have been going haywire, power-conduits and circuit-boards smashed and pulverised, it's systems malfunctioning in all the ways they could, but the warmth she was feeling rising inside her had nothing to do with the heating._

* * *

><p>"So…feel better…now?" Seifer spat blood out.<p>

Xu took a deep breath, the world seeming to stabilise around her as she did so. "Yeah. Yeah I…" she coughed and tasted copper in her mouth. He had gotten in a good one at the end there. Hyne knows how it would have went if he had been seriously trying to fight her. "I think I do." She stared down at the man, the man she had always hated, the man who had taken her friends away from her for a stupid dream. "You just answer me one question."

"Shoot. Actually don't, I think my ribs are cracked, god damnit Tyynes…"

"All this. All this repentance crap, your little crusade to clean up Galbadia. Helping us against the sorceress cultists. All that crap. _Is it real?_"

Seifer leaned up against the bricks, one had on the wall to steady himself. Outside, back in the street, snow was still falling. "Back when the war…_god_ that hurts…when the war ended, there was a lot of crap talked about bringing those who been responsible 'to justice', right?"

"Yes." She had been one of the driving forces behind it. Caraway's plush cell was here doing. "What of it."

"I saw a poster, when I came here. After Kiros hunted me down Fujin said a few things. At first I just thought _of course_ why wouldn't they ask? They need all the help they can get, right?" The man seemed to be speaking to someone beyond her now. "When I came here, started working underneath her – heh – it was a few years after and Fury was already locked up and everyone seemed to be pretty much over the whole thing, unless you lived here or in Dollet."

"Get to the point."

"Getting to it. We were sifting through a broken-down old house for some battery or power or…doesn't matter. Anyway, I dug up one of those posters. WANTED: Alive, blah blah blah, you know how it went."

"You found your own wanted poster. Is _that_ it?"

"There were children." All signs of emotion had gone out of Seifer Almasy's face. "They were in the street playing Knights and Sorceresses. Except now instead of just a sorceress and her knight against whatever unlucky brat got picked to be the bad guy, it's a sorceress and her knight against the evil knight." He looked her in the eyes as he spoke. "I did that. I guess that one really broke through right."

"Your dream."

"Lost that dream to Leonhart. I'm over it." He stood up straight and wiped himself down, the snow falling off his jacket in great white swathes. "Reckon I'd like to see if I can do something about changing that game back to the way it was though. So yes, this is for real."

"God, I would never have believed it."

"Insult me later Tyynes. Don't you have some kittens to herd?"

They walked back to the mansion in silence. There would never be friendship between them, but there could at least be some measure of respect. Not comrades, but she would settle for teammates.

* * *

><p>"Good morning everyone."<p>

She greeted them as they came into the large fire-lit cavern quaintly called the 'drawing room'. Anywhere else it could have held balls. Papers were already piled away to make space for the others, and they looked to each other bemusedly as they saw Xu standing there waiting for them. Seifer, Fujin and Raijin were already there, stood off to one side in the shadows. Not part of the group, but still included. Only Squall seemed unperturbed by his being upstaged, and his expression when the others turned to him was only one of polite deference to Xu.

She waited for everyone to be present before she started. "We have several problems. We've been attacked, we've had our people taken hostage, and we have been directly challenged by what can reasonably be called a terrorist organisation." She eyed them all. "We will deal with all of this. First."

"The speech," Squall said.

Xu nodded. "Leonard Nerva is leading the Sorceress Cultists in Dollet, with this man Aimsland behind him pulling the strings. The armband on show was for cultists in other countries, a message; _Dollet is ours now._ The new duke is just a child and won't reasonably be able to reign in his new prime minister. His country belong to them now."

"Poor kid," Selphie muttered.

"Their objective is clear; they want SeeD dismantled or dead. All the pretty words about a beacon of freedom is empty noise, he wants us gone so that his little sect can do whatever it wants without having to worry about us. He's made his play and he wants us to know it." She smiled, but there was no humour in it. "However, he also thinks he might be able to make a deal with us."

"You're shitting me," Seifer muttered.

"No, she's right." Irvine nodded as he found everyone suddenly looking at him. "I thought it was pretty weird what he said at the end: '_Whether that be some splinter faction of one of the three Gardens or commander Squall Leonhart himself'._" He looked over at said commander. "He's giving you an excuse to stay out of his way."

"All I have to do is call Quistis and Zell traitors." His tone, his body language said everything he needed to. _Never._

"I think we're all agreed on our response to that. Whether Aimsland told him to extend the olive branch or Nerva did it himself, he can't seriously believe we'd grab it." Xu took a breath. "This is the biggest threat to us since Ultimecia. We don't know what the hell the sorceress cultists are doing, but we know they want power and they will kill anyone in their way to get it. That's enough for us to make sure they _don't _get it. Even if he doesn't know it, the duke is now our client, and our new mission is to clear the cultists out of his city, find this man Aimsland, and smash his face into the dirt. Where it will remain."

"Fuckin' A," Raijin said.

Xu noticed Rinoa fidgeting silently next to Squall and prayed she would stay silent until she was done. "Fujin, Raijin. I know this isn't exactly your jurisdiction…"

"Whatever ya need me for ma'am."

"Go to Dollet, link up with Nida and Zell. Find out everything you can from them, and start thinking up a way to get Quistis out of that nest of vipers. I'd feel a lot better if our headmistress was capable of doing her job." She didn't have to say the other reason she wanted her out.

"As you say." Fujin slipped out of the room silently, Raijin following behind.

"Irvine, Selphie. Make sure Galbadia is up to withstanding a Dolletian assault."

"You think it'll come to that?" Irvine asked.

Xu shrugged. "I think right now if Leonard Nerva said that Galbadia helped SeeD to kill the duchess they would crawl up the walls by their fingernails to get at us."

"Why not just get the _Ragnarok_ to come over and blast them a few times?" Selphie asked, the cheerful tone of her voice at odds with what she was suggesting.

Squall shifted and spoke up at that. "Our job's to stop wars, not make them bigger." Xu nodded silently and he went on. "President Loire's always been there for us but he would agree we can't make this any bigger than it is. Dollet isn't our enemy, only the bastards who've taken it over. If we brought Esthar into the fight who knows where this would end."

"And that would be _bad._ On it." He was about to leave when Xu motioned him to stay.

She turned to the other nameless staffers still in the room. She didn't really know their names, hadn't had the time. As she barked out orders to them and watched them respond though she saw her face in theirs. _People who get things done._ Finally the room was empty of outsiders, and only the children of Balamb Garden were left.

"Still sure you don't want my job Xu?" Squall said wryly.

"You couldn't pay me enough."

"Not with our budget." He sighed. "So what is it you wanted to ask us alone."

She looked over at Squall's wife. Somehow the centre of the room even though she stood at the edge. There was just something _about_ the young woman that made people notice her. Maybe it was the sorceress power. Maybe just herself. "They want you, Rinoa."

Rinoa Heartilly smiled . "I'd guessed."

Squall tensed up immediately. Whatever his lack of experience with covert operations he seemed to be almost supernaturally good at predicting anything to do with his wife. Not that she could blame him. "Xu if you're going to ask Rinoa to hand herself over to Dollet you-"

Xu quickly shook her head before Squall got a head of steam. "The attack on Dollet, the offer they made Squall just to get a little closer to you, Nerva's words at the end of that speech. They _want_ you for something Rinoa. I want you and Squall to stay in Galbadia and find out what."

Squall seemed unconvinced. "You think the answer's here?"

Xu nodded. "I know it. People were dying in this city, random killings and nobody knows why, except they were all SeeDs and whoever did it is still out there. That old man we visited talked about tunnels under the city hiding cultists. That murdered researcher working at the university was killed by someone he knew, and that someone was a trained killer." She looked from her superior officer to the woman still so far from being a true soldier. But they were what she had. "Find out for us."

"I will," Rinoa said, before Squall could open his mouth. The husband looked uncomfortable at the words, but Xu didn't have time to try and solve the problems between a Sorceress and her Knight.

"We don't know what's happening here yet, not really. I intend to change that as fast as humanely possible."

"You sound like you're worried."

Xu smiled in wry amusement. "Who, me?"

_Worried? I'm _afraid, _Squall. I'm afraid that there's something going on out there beyond some petty dispute over religion or territory. Something huge and powerful, and one day soon it's going to descend from the sky and grind us into the dirt, and unless we get a handle on it we'll have no warning at all._

"Don't be ridiculous." She looked around the room at the assembled members of the Orphanage Gang. She had never been a part of them, knew there was an invisible circle that surrounded them that she could never penetrate. She had never allowed herself to dwell on it before, she had her job and they had theirs. They may have been Balamb Garden's muscle but she was its brain. Now though, in that warm room as the winter snows still howled outside, she wondered what it would have been like to be one of them. "Let's get to work everyone."

SeeD went to war.

* * *

><p>They had drugged her with something. She had tried to stand at first, tried to pace the walls of the white box they had put her into but when she stood the walls had swum in her vision and she collapsed back to the hard floor, the chains binding her arms clinking together with unbearable noise as she did so. Even lifting her arms seemed almost a herculean effort, and any thoughts she had came to her through a fog that seemed to eclipse her mind. As her mind was submerged she could feel the power underneath it, trying to break through to the surface as her panic rose, but she forced it back down. Even drugged out of her mind she could do that much, years of keeping her Blue magic dormant giving her the control she needed.<p>

"No no, that won't do at all.

The voice and face sounded familiar, but any attempt she made to search her memory only made it ache. Whoever it was stood in the cell, a dark shadow against the pristine white. It stalked closer, growing larger and larger until it almost eclipsed her vision, and even as she tried to cringe back there was nowhere to go, her back pressed against the wall as some small untouched part of her shouted _coward_ at the rest of her.

"Let it all out Trepe, break down those barriers." The shape leaned in closer and she could feel hot breath wash across her. The shape shifted in front of her. "Is this crap going to work?"

"Given time. Time which we now have."

The voice came out of nowhere. It sounded familiar but no further insight came to her.

"Time I gave you," the voice said.

She struggled against the drugs, against the sickness in her head, and finally a name arrived in her mind, pure and bright with an emotion that lately had come to embody it in every way. _Nerva._

"And I won't forget. When we come into our world you'll find yourself rewarded enough."

"Nerva…"

The black shape turned back. "Well well, it speaks. I thought we'd used enough but SeeD breeds them tough I suppose. Or maybe not SeeD." Leonard Nerva's black outline leaned down closer to her. "What?"

"_I'm glad it was me that kicked you out."_

When he spoke the words were flat on the air. "Is that so."

Blinding pain struck her from the side, and her head rang like a bell as the voice from nowhere spoke up again, harsh and loud in the white box and hissing like a snake.

"_If you break her you get nothing!"_

The ringing in her skull stopped her from hearing the reply but Nerva's shadow stalked out of the room, leaving her alone in her cell with only a voice to add feeling to the white emptiness.

"I'm sorry Quisty but we need you. We need you for the story to be complete. To be what you truly are."

"You don't…you don't get to call me that."

When the nothing spoke back at her, there was tenderness in its voice. Still she couldn't place it. "It'll all be fixed soon, and we'll fly together like we should have done. Until then you'll be safe here, with us."

"Xu…"

"Shhh. You'll forget that name soon enough, I promise. Here, this will make you feel better."

It felt like a dagger had been plunged into her skull, and it was only after a second that the emotion surged through her, emotion that wasn't her own.

_RAGE. ANGER. HUMILIATION._

The name was there instantly, cutting through the drugs like a knife. "Shiva?" The presence in her head paused, the anger replaced by confusion as it realised where it was. For a second Quistis teetered on the blink of throwing up as she felt a Guardian Force for the first time in years. Instead of reassuring strength it felt like an alien thing in her head and she resisted the urge to recoil, knowing that the ice goddess would feel it. She could taste her blue magic forcing itself up again and pushed it down with what was left of her strength.

"Someone will watch over you. Goodbye Quisty. We'll meet again when you're ready for the next step."

"Wait…" But no reply came, and Quistis Trepe was left alone in a white void, with only a raging goddess and her own soul for company. She tried to stand, to go after the voice that had spoken so warmly to her, but her body felt tied down by weights, and all she could do was sit there on the floor..

When the small gray shape entered the room, it stood there on the threshold for only a moment, staring down at the blonde woman. Quistis tried to stare back, to make out some form but there was nothing, darkness enclosing her vision as she fought to stay awake. As quietly as it could it stepped across the room to her side, sliding down the wall next to her, and Quistis felt cold hands against her, under her clothes and sliding around her body. When the lips pressed against her own she couldn't even cry out in protest. What little vision she had swam away, and when finally her consciousness faded the last she felt was a hand at her breast, and a small voice whispering. Not in her ear, but in her head.

_Be my knight._

Darkness claimed her.

* * *

><p>"Kill her and be done with it."<p>

The three men stood at the summit of the palace, staring out over the continent before them. They could not have been more dissimilar; the intense and almost hunched figure of Leonard Nerva, staring with hungry eyes and a suspicious mind at the other two, as if a moment's lapse of vigilance would see them snatch away what they had promised. The man Kettil almost the opposite, the black shawl billowing against him in the breeze, the knives that Quistis had felt in the throne-room and Zell had seen in Centra hidden underneath the layers of cloth. He stood with the casual confidence of the trained solider who knew that there was no possible threat that his companions could compose. The fact grated against Nerva's own combat training like nails on a chalkboard, but the man in black paid it no mind. And one more, the third.

Morden Aimsland sighed as he spoke. It was the sigh of someone mildly inconvenienced by the rain ruining their day out, or a parent seeing the bloody knee of their crying child. Not the sigh of a regicide or a fanatic at all. "I've told you once I've told you a thousand times Mr Nerva, my plans for her go beyond what you need to know."

He wasn't mollified. "She'll cause you more trouble than you think, I guarantee it." Quistis Trepe drove Leonard Nerva up the wall. The humiliation he had felt when he had seen the signature on the papers saying his time at Garden was at an end. She'd thrown away his talent, fine. Now she could taste the consequences. "I can-"

Morden turned and did the air seem just a little darker, the wind a little colder as he did so? There was something in his eyes. Nerva would kid himself that he was doing it for power, the reward he had been promised and Kettil to see an old promise fulfilled, but on some deep level both of them knew that it was the eyes that kept them there. Like black holes they had been sucked into their orbit and any attempt to escape would end up sucking them all the way in. "No." The word carried the weight of ages. "Don't you have work to do?" he said almost casually, but Nerva both knew he was dismissed. He stalked down from the tower without another word, leaving the two alone. "Say it, old friend."

Kettil adjusted his cloak around him as the sea wind blew. "He is not trustworthy."

Morden chuckled. "I don't intent to trust him."

"Do we still need him?" Morden shrugged and Kettil was struck by how much like a normal person he could seem when he was relaxed. But he knew those cold eyes and that black wind were never far away. There was something in him that kept that inhumanity close to the surface, hiding just under the shell that other people saw. Only among the other Faithful was Aimsland really himself, and that self was an intense black thing that made people recoil away even as it made them reach out for his touch.

"He'll bring us the rest of the city the faithful don't hold and the tiny new duke trusts him, although I can't think why."

"And the girl?"

He smiled and there it was. "Lucky, so lucky one of them ended up here. You can see it in those eyes of hers. The process will be accelerated considerably with her help."

"And it will work?"

"The human mind reaches out for input, for sensation and feeling, old friend." Even the word 'friend' somehow seemed distorted when he spoke it. "When you deny it sustenance it eats into itself, revealing the soul beneath." His smile was nothing like Nerva's. While the Dolletian was a snake, Morden Aimsland's smile was utterly sincere, and all the more terrifying for it. "Ms Trepe has hidden her soul very well and to eat away to reveal it would take years, but now she is eating for three." He turned and went to leave the tower, clapping a hand onto Kettil's shoulder as he did so. "Soon. All this will be fixed, the way it should be, and you can dance with your wife again. I promise you."

The man in black stood at the top of tower alone and wondered. He imagined he could look out across the plains and see its past written upon it. Dollet had been a great empire once and the faint scars of roads and ruins were visible upon its countryside. He imagined he could see enemies flowing into the city across those roads, and knew that he was right to do so. He started down the stairs as the first snows blew in from Galbadia, leaving behind the light and going down into the darkness where Aimsland and his Faithful waited. A black spectre with his soldiers arrayed around him, and three goddesses locked beneath.

It would be a cold year.

_End of Part One_

* * *

><p>There will be a week or two's break or so before the next chapter goes up, while I have some IRL work to get done. After that normal updates will resume.<p>

As usual, reviews, comments, critisism all welcome. I'm also still looking for a proof-reader, if anyone wants to donate time to spell- and grammer-check in exchage for early access. Message me if you're interested.

Thanks for sticking around this far. Part two is going to be a wild ride.

-Cobray_  
><em>


	21. Rinoa Heartilly

Spring seemed years away. Rinoa blew into her hands and watched as the snowflakes dissolved and coating her hands in a thin film of dew. She cursed as she wiped herself down and felt rather than saw the smile. She had been doing it a lot lately, the bond between the two of them deepening as they spent the days together. "Quiet you."

"I didn't say a word," Squall said, but she could hear the laughter in his voice.

The man had left them alone for a moment and almost immediately Rinoa had turned to her husband and said _he's creepy._ He had agreed. There was something about the man - about the whole institution really - that did not inspire confidence. Rinoa remembered teachers mainly as nurses and tutors when she had still been Caraway's daughter, and then as serious men and women only a little older than herself when she had come to Balamb Garden and SeeD. This severe and uptight gentleman of the University of Deling was nothing like any of them.

He strode back into the room with a sheaf of papers under his arm and shot them a glance that seemed to say _I don't have time for this _and _I'm here against my better judgement_ all at the same time. He had told them his name when finally they had threaded their way through the narrow and old wooden corridors to his office, but Rinoa had decided she wasn't going to bother remembering it. Or what he was saying. When the man had seen her walk in and the tiny gleam had appeared in his eye she had taken in instant dislike. They had shouted _I want that_ in the voice of a child used to getting what he wants.

"-almost certainly sure what he was working on you had any relation to his death you understand. The poor man was something of a scatterbrain, even among the faculty, ah-ha, and he didn't really make any sort of system for-"

She suspected Squall was just as bored and infuriated as she was, but his SeeD training hid it much better. "Of course doctor-" He had accidentally called the man 'mister' at the start of the conversation, which hadn't endeared them to him. "-we'd just like to know more about him."

The professor flicked through the sheets and talked as they cascaded through his hands. "Not much to say really. He kept to himself and we didn't, ah-ha, exactly mind. We're more of the _hard_ sciences in this department and unfortunately Sorcery isn't really compatible with anything _hard._" The way his eyes flicked across to Rinoa, however, told her he'd very much like to make it so. She'd seen it in the years after the Second War. She was a curiosity to be studied, categorised, written about, awards won for the study thereof. The fact that she was a living breathing person was aside the point. "I believe he was studying the effects of Time Compression. The _release_ of all points back to their respective origin points, rather than the Compression itself. He thought that the poor victims of the event must have somehow had their minds taken _away_ when it ended, to some other point of history." The man laughed, an unpleasant braying. "He wondered whether more, ah-ha, _physical_ things could make the journey also, and if some things were taken from the present away, could not other things have been brought to us here, and left behind so to speak."

It was taking all of Rinoa's concentration to stop herself from falling asleep, but the bite in Squall's voice brought her awake. "You mean things from Ultimecia's era could have stayed here in the present after Time Compression ended?"

"Just a theory my boy, just a theory."

Squall stood, and the professor didn't seem unhappy the ad-hoc interview. She knew the type. "Thank you for your time."

* * *

><p>"Squall you're thinking far too hard about this."<p>

The tall man idly kicked a stone into the street as they walked to the car. "It sounds plausible."

Rinoa sighed. That was the problem of course. It _was_ possible. Anything became possible when any sort of magic was thrown into the mix. Forces of the beyond called down to do the bidding of mere mortals didn't like small things like the laws of physics or causality get in their way. "You think when Time Compression ended one of Ultimecia's…._things_…stayed behind."

"Or Ultimecia herself."

"You don't think…"

"The dead researcher was looking at Sorceresses and time-travel. He was killed for _something_ Rin. We don't know what happens in the future. One day Ultimecia is born and is going to become a Sorceress, and between that moment and us killing her there's a whole life she's going to live. Who's to say she one day she's going to notice a giant compressed history and think 'let's go take a look'?"

_My God he's really thinking it. He really thinks she might be here._ "I'd know if there was another sorceress out there."

"You don't-"

"Squall. I'd _know._" _Like an electric current running through my brain, I'd know._

He rubbed his face as if trying to wipe the thoughts away. "Sorry, I just…sorry."

She knew what was bothering him, what he didn't want to say. _We're nowhere._ Since that day in the mansion's room they had all went their separate ways. Fujin and Raijin had gone away to Dollet, a speck disappearing on the horizon. Irvine and Selphie toured the walls and armoires to find out exactly what they could do if Dollet's fury descended on Deling City. They slept in barracks and went through the mansion like ghosts. Seifer and Xu were doing something, didn't show their faces except to eat and would conspicuously not talk about their plans in the few times that their paths would cross. Somehow a week had passed and they had gotten nowhere, as if the tracks the killer had left across Deling had been wiped away like chalk on a blackboard. The best they could say was that there hadn't been any further trouble. The cultists in the city had gone to ground, and any protests against SeeD had stayed in the villages and outskirts of the empire, far away from Deling itself.

Which meant her own plan had become just a little more difficult.

* * *

><p>She was planning something, he knew it.<p>

Whether he wanted to bring it up though was something else. He knew that Rinoa was feeling Quistis' imprisonment much worse than he was. Bizarrely, imprisonment meant much more to Rinoa, a woman who had grown up with every need taken care of, than to Squall, who had actually been in prison. His short tenure in Galbadia's desert facility had been just one more empty box to be put in by people who didn't like him. To her to be locked away from others and the world was slow torture. Even though she hadn't grown up in the orphanage they had always been family, and Quistis had been the big sister Rinoa had never had. For all Squall knew Rinoa was feeling it much worse than Quistis herself. He wished he could do something more concrete than simple reassurances, but there was nothing, just chasing through the dark city after an angry ghost. "What now?"

She tried to sound as nonchalant as she could. "It's pretty late already, let's just get some sleep. I think talking to that guy drained away all my energy." Squall was more correct than he knew. She hated the thought of Quisty trapped in that place, surrounded by people like _that_. At first when the war had ended and they had all been basking in success she hadn't minded the attention so much. When the world had returned to a more normal state of business however she'd looked again and hadn't liked any of what she'd seen of the young, intense faction of the Church of Hyne, before they had earned the name of _cult_.

They still drew looks as they walked through the street. They were a well-known couple but after the news from Dollet not all of the looks were as friendly or awe-inspired as they used to be. The only consolation were the few, one out of a hundred maybe, who approached the pair to thank them. It didn't happen often, but it was enough to raise Rinoa's spirits back up, and to give her the strength she knew she'd need if she was going to pull this off. The lights of the mansion shone down on them from on top of the hill, and as they approached the doors she turned to Squall and, asking herself one more time if it would really be worth it, and getting the same answer, she made her decision.

"Squall?"

He took a step ahead of her and stopped, was almost pulled backwards in fact, as he realised she had froze on the doorstep. "What?"

"Trust me."

"Alwa-"

He didn't finish the word. Power surged through her hand and into Squall's body and he didn't even have time to wonder what the massive light was before he was unconscious. Rinoa stepped forward and caught him as he collapsed, his weight almost bringing her down with him. As gently and quietly as she could she shifted him into a sitting position next to the door and surveyed her handiwork. She knew that whoever was on patrol would be making their rounds tonight would be in for a shock, and she had to stifle a giggle at the thought of them finding a sleeping snow-covered Squall on the doorstep. The urge quickly faded as the knowledge of what she was about to do pushed itself back into the forefront of her mind. Squall and the others would hate it, but for some strange reason she thought that maybe Xu would approve. She knelt down next to him and kissed him lightly on the forehead, her hand slipping the note into his jacket.

_I'm sorry._

Rinoa walked off into the night, as the snow continued to fall over the mansion. She felt the urge to look back become stronger and stronger as the hill took the mansion out of her view, and almost resisted it.

* * *

><p>She sat in front of the frozen lake, just watching as the children skated over it. She had drawn some odd glances as she had arrived and sat there on the bench, but the children had went on with their games oblivious and the parents were too busy watching over the children to wonder who the well-dressed young woman was. She idly wondered how long the lake would remain frozen, even though the other lakes and ponds of the Deling park had turned back to liquid. She knew she had gone too far, used for power just for some dumb magic trick, and she didn't even know how long it would last. Edea would have been furious with her. After the war she had spent some time at the orphanage, with the ex-sorceress and Quisty, just to try and get some hold on her powers, and both of them would have been disappointed in her. She could have kicked herself. Even after all they had been through – everything Squall had been through because of her – she still didn't respect it. Just one more toy to be pulled out of the box and used for her own entertainment. Once when she had drunk a little more than she should have, Quistis' walls had slipped away, just a little bit, and the bitterness in her voice had been shocking coming from that beautiful mouth.<p>

_It's like a mad dog Rinoa. Sure it looks cute and useful from a distance, but you get close enough and it notices you, it's going to tear into you before you realise you've opened the gate_. _I got lucky Rin, this blue crap's got a priority list and I'm pretty low down on it. But in the end, when everything else is ashes, it'll go for me last rather than go away. I know it._

She'd opened that gate just a little, just for a joke, and now for all she knew Deling City had a permanent ice-rink. She didn't know what she was doing. Still just a child.

"Miss Heartilly."

She didn't turn, but her heart sunk all the same at the voice came from beside her. It had gotten so close without a sound. "It's _mrs._" She sighed in a way that didn't reveal her misery at discovery. _Damnit damnit damnit! I should have had more time!_

"Certainly it's not _cadet,_ at least not right now." Xu Tyynes sat down on the bench next to Rinoa. Even wrapped up against the winter night she still looked preternaturally thin and poised. The poise and grace that the young SeeD officer carried around with her had been twisted and warped into an almost predatory thinness. Rinoa knew why and any other day she would have sympathised, but she wasn't going to let that sympathy deter her this time. "Have you totally lost your senses?"

She resisted the urge to say _I know what I'm doing_. She barely knew what she was doing. "How's Squall?"

"Your husband is out like a light and nothing we can is waking him up. What did you _do_ to him Rinoa?"

_Oh nothing much. Just a trickle of power through his brain. Just enough to overload his senses and shut him down, the man who loves and trusts me. _"Not much. He'll be fine."

"I'm so glad to hear that." She sat down next to Rinoa on the bench. "Rinoa you've clearly got some sort of plan that would make you do this, but you don't understand what you're really getting yourself into."

She couldn't take her eyes from the children on the lake. Even as the parents tried to get them to leave they always wanted to stay, trying to drag themselves backwards as they were dragged away even though some had quite obvious colds. Like they couldn't help themselves."You don't like me much, do you Xu." It wasn't a question.

Xu sighed, her breath misting out in the air. She was looking over at the kids too, but whatever she was thinking was a mystery, possibly to them both. "I think you're a wonderful person Rinoa. But you're not a SeeD."

Rinoa laughed. "Yeah. You're right." She knew it. Aways knew somehow, whenever Quistis would look at her with that half-smile of mixed exasperation and tolerance, whenever Squall hadn't bothered to tell her something about the jobs he had been on or the close calls he had had. _God damn you for saying it though._

"You're kind and thoughtful and it would never occur to you to do something that would hurt others, not unless you really, really thought it was necessary. So what are you doing that's so bad, that your own beau can't help out?"

"What gives you that right?" She knew Xu would see through her dodge, but she needed time to think. "To decide whether I can be a SeeD or not." Anger flushed through her at the thought. "SeeDs look after their own. Come with me instead of just sitting here and plotting…plotting whatever it is you do. What gives you the _right?_"

For a moment she thought she had gone too far, as Xu just stared at her and the two women sat there in silence. Finally when Rinoa couldn't stand it anymore and opened her mouth Xu began to speak.

"I wasn't born in Balamb. That's where I – where we - ended up, but it's not where I'm from, not really. I was born in Esthar."

"In _Esthar?"_ Rinoa did the maths in her head. The hologram barrier had been up for as long as she could remember, only their own incursion and the Second War finally bringing it down. "That-"

Xu nodded, not looking at Rinoa. Instead she stared out over the lake, elbows resting on her knees and her hands propping up her chin. The words came slowly, as if dredged up from some pit. "My parents were soldiers under Adel. They were…there's a reason that you don't find many Estharians in the rest of the world.I mean you have to understand _we_ could see the holo-wall fine. We could look out over the salt plains and see this whole other world out there, but back then it wasn't exactly politic to talk about it. You wondered what was on the other side sure but you never wondered out loud."

"Adel."

Xu nodded. "Adel. My parents were part of a unit that hunted down people who tried to escape from Esthar. I mean the way out was all around us, we could damn well _see_ it was there, like a cage over the entire continent, but it wasn't perfect. Maintenance holes, broken pieces where an monster had just ran into it and punched a hole through. If you wanted away from that crazy old tyrant you ran to the wall. That's how they met, even. Both chasing the same person, both caught him at the same time. Love over a pair of iron-sights." She laughed, but there was no humour in it. Only bitterness. "So when they ran they knew the best way to do it."

"I never knew your parents were alive."

Xu turned to Rinoa and for a second, no more, there could have been something resembling grief there. "After I was born they just couldn't stand it anymore. I have no idea how they found out but when Laguna started making his resistance they packed up and went home."

"Are they…"

"No, they're dead. They died freeing their country. You know I…I always wondered whether it as patriotism or just guilt that made them go back. Whether it was love that made them leave me behind or they just didn't give a damn. I'll never know. I even asked Laguna after the Second War ended and he didn't even remember them. Just two more faces in his army that gave their lives for the dream. I'll _never_ know." The traces of tears had gone and the eyes were hard flint. "I won't let a person like Adel happen again. Not if it's in Galbadia or Dollet or even Balamb. I won't permit it. If I have to sit here and hold the fort and…and do _nothing_ while she's locked up down there then _so be it!_" She almost hissed the last words.

Rinoa stared at the other woman in shock. She tried to grope for something to say but found only useless platitudes. "Does Quistis know all that?"

Almost a sneer. "Of course she does." She would never tell Rinoa though, never. Not how she had cried and cried when she had finally let it all out. Not how Quistis had just held her and whispered into her ear _of course they loved you, they didn't want you to go back into that hellhole_. For that night she had been a frightened crying child again and Quistis had just held her. She wouldn't tell that. Not to anyone. "I.." T words wouldn't come, just faltered as they hit the air. The woman stood up. "Goddamnit Rinoa just don't do anything to get her killed or I swear I'll drag Adel's coffin out of Esthar and put you in it myself."

"I promise."

Xu stood and stalked away into the night, leaving Rinoa alone on the bench. She sat staring out into the darkness after the woman, mind whirring over everything she had been told and everything she had known. Some of it was a surprise and some of it had been totally shocking, but underneath that the words came back.

_You're not a SeeD, Rinoa._

She had tried, tried so hard, but maybe hearing it from Xu had finally been what it had taken to make it sink in. She looked at Squall and Quistis and the others and saw that righteousness and justice that they seemed to carry around like armour, and hadn't noticed that the armour had been scrubbed raw where blood sometimes coated it. She had wanted to see SeeD only as the warriors of light, and forgotten that there can't be light without shadows. Xu was a part of those shadows, and the rest all lived with it to some degree, but she knew that she never could.

_I'll find my own way._ The first step stood before her now, she just had to wait for it to arrive. She wasn't waiting long.

* * *

><p>"Your friend seems to have left you. Want some company? It's a dangerous city for a woman on her own."<p>

She turned so that both her hands would be visible, the golden band on her ring-finger flashing in the air, and saw the man standing there. "No." There was nothing remarkable about the man, just one more young, rich layabout in a city still full of them and looking for company on a weekend night. "I'm waiting for someone."

"A tall, dark and handsome knight perhaps?"

_Ah, finally._

Her blood could have been the water in the frozen lake as she looked again, really looked, at the man. There was nothing obvious about him, no tell-tale armband or necklace, but she still knew. They must have been waiting for Xu to leave before they approached her. Summoning what reserves of it she had, she called forth the cold confidence she had learned from Squall. "I don't know you."

The man knelt before her. There was nobody else in the park now, just an empty white square and a frozen lake. She stood before the man, the proud Sorceress before her humble servant. "One of the faithful, sent to wait and serve."

Xu was wrong, she hated the. She hated them for the wild slavery they tried to pass off to others as real faith even as they held her friend captive hundreds of miles away, even as they cut the throats of children for their own convenience. "Then serve. Where's your leader?" So simple. Why go through all the rigmarole of searching for a killer, why bother chasing down paper-trails or thin pieces of evidence when she could simply walk up and ask them.

_Because you're dealing with the devil, and you don't know what cards he's holding, or even what game he's playing,_ a voice in her head replied.

_Go away, Xu._

"It would be my honour to take you to him."

"No." He looked up at her shocked, and she held his gaze. She reached back in her memory, the services she had gone to as a child. She remembered the minister, a genial old man who had patted her on the head and given her sweets when her father wasn't looking. For all that he was a terror in the pulpit. Now, how did it go? Ah yes. "If I am to be your archangel I would know my flock. Take me to _them."_

The shock turned first to annoyance and slid through the emotions into awe as he realised what he was saying. The man got up, his clothes stained from the dirt-covered snow. He turned and gestured, walking ahead of her and sometimes glancing back, either checking whether she was still following him or whether she was truly there, had deigned to speak with him. A part of her was disgusted not at the man but at the others who had made him this way, that had taken faith and twisted it into this servile shell. A small part of her looked at the way he obviously worshipped her, his hands unconsciously reaching up to his neck to touch the cultist's symbol hanging there, and wondered what possible comfort he could be getting from a faith that so obviously used him like a tame dog. A smaller part of her looked at that worshipping servant and liked what it saw. The sorceress inside her.

Like others before her Rinoa Heartilly vanished into the night, with only her own soul to light the way. She only prayed that it would be bright enough to keep her true.

* * *

><p>Turned out it didn't take as long as I thought. Welcome back.<p>

-Cobray


	22. Fujin Satomi

She had been resisting the urge to scratch all day, as her scalp cried out in protest at its rough treatment. _Hey Fu a change is as good as a rest y'know_, Raijin had tried without success to cheer her up. It hadn't worked though, and she had come as close to sulking as she ever did on the days-long ride across the plains, great green fields hidden under a deluge of white that turned first to a muddy brown and then to a dull emerald as they left Deling's winter-weather behind. She shivered under her greatcoat. At least in the city the last season of the year had brought it's cleansing white snow to offset the chilling winds. Everywhere else on the continent it was just cold. Selphie and Irvine could keep Trabia, if _this_ was what it was like.

"Reason for entering?"

These hadn't been here the last time she had came through Dollet, but she wasn't surprised at their presence at the town gates. "Business," she replied tersely, her throat burning in the cold air. Deling and Dollet seemed like two ice-cold cities connected by a thin strip of slightly-chilly countryside. She wished she could go back to Balamb, if only for a few days, and whatever geological magic that made cold fronts dodge around it like magnets of the same pole.

The man just nodded and waved her through, and why not. They had a list of people they were looking for, and none of the descriptions of the pair better known as Fujin and Raijin included a dark-haired woman driving into the city on her own. her scalp still itched, curse Tyynes.

From the sidewalk she watched the streets with the concentration of a sniper scanning for targets, just drinking it all in. She wasn't even the only one doing it. Dollet's regular almost uniform-like styles of heavy leathers and thick jackets had been accessorised, and the most recent addition she could see was white armbands that flashed through the crowd like low-flying doves. To her they looked like dead skin infesting a still-living body. She only hoped there was some way to halt the infection before the host died.

"Heya."

She nodded as Raijin took appeared beside her, already dressed like a local. Give the woman her due, Xu had prepared everything ahead of time.

* * *

><p>"<em>Are you sure this is such a good idea?"<em>

_They stood like two women trying on clothes in a high-street changing room. Xu had watched her as she had tried on practically everything they could lay hands on until eventually she had looked as much a Dollet citizen as she could. Only the hair and eye-patch marked her out as different and far, far too recognisable. Xu probably had a solution for that as well, and she was dreading it. As a SeeD she threw on and discarded clothes and uniforms like gloves, but her hair was her own._

_Xu nodded as she leaned against the desk, arms crossed and watching her like a surgeon examining a patient about to go under. She wasn't quite satisfied with this or that and they had already spent an hour there surrounded by the stacks of garments Raijin had shanghai'd from the rest of the mansion before Fujin had asked the question. She didn't really need to be here at all. "I'm absolutely sure."_

"_I know what you think about me, but-"_

"_No you don't."_

"_I-"_

"_You know what I think about Seifer." Fujin stayed quiet as Xu talked. The woman seemed to feel the need to get something off her chest. "I saw the tape, of you and Laguna back in Esthar, and I know your history. Your parents." She looked into her eyes and Fujin saw something there, some spark of fellowship. It was gone quickly, so quickly she wondered if she had imagined it. "I can sympathise." _

_Xu reached behind herself and handed over something. At first she thought it was a drink, but she read the label and… "You are kidding."_

"_No," Xu said in a voice that brooked no argument. "Name for me anyone else in the world with white hair. We can't afford any screw-ups."_

_Fujin looked at the can of colouring and sighed. At least she the woman hadn't asked her to shave it. "Alright." As if she had a choice. For all that Xu seemed willing to indulge in the fiction that they were just a normal subordinate and her commander, they both knew that Fujin's position anywhere other than locked deep in an Esthar prison depended utterly on her complete co-operation. "And the other?" She tapped her eyepatch._

_Xu frowned. "Working on that. Listen…" _

_She stopped, as if unsure about what she wanted to say next. Finally Fujin realised what it was, why Xu had insisted on helping with the getup for her little infiltration mission. It certainly hadn't been for kicks or to watch her squirm, life as a soldier having long ago beaten useless modesty out of them. Fujin thought it through and picked her words as carefully as she could. She knew it must have been eating the woman away inside. She remembered long ago, practically another life, when Seifer had broken out of B-Garden's holding cell and went to Deling to stop the then-Sorceress Edea. They had been comrades and friends, and they had dropped everything and ran after him. Never-mind that it had meant throwing away their positions in SeeD, or tossing them down a path that might require a lifetime's repentance to make up for. This was even worse than that. "I'll do everything that I can," Fujin said softly, and her reward was a grateful nod of thanks from Xu._

* * *

><p>Raijin was still rubbing at his arms and she had to tell him to stop.<p>

"Sorry Fu. Just the damned water down there y'know." His own entrance had been considerably less smooth and considerably more dank and wet, but there simply hadn't been another choice in the time they had. A can of cheap colouring and a glass eye might work well enough for her at a quick glance, but nothing would do anything to stop the cultists noticing a six-six black man coming in through the city gates. "Stuff's like acid. So now what?"

Truth be told she barely knew. Somewhere in the city Zell and Nida were hiding like rats from a searchlight, and she had no idea how she was going to meet up with them. Xu was trusting herself and Raijin to be her eyes and ears in the enemy city – strange to think of Dollet as an enemy – but she felt blind and deaf. Built up over decades as fisherman had come to the fertile shore, eventually the hub of an empire that had collapsed long before any of them had been been. Dollet was built upon more Dollet. When you dug into the ground you found a maze. Armies could be hidden inside it. At least one army _had_ been, judging by the amount of white armbands walking the streets. When she had arrived she'd tried to hate them in the same way that Kiros and Xu did, but had found herself unable to. Looking for some purpose in life they'd been unable to find one, and had latched onto someone stronger than they. She could certainly understand _that_.

She drank her coffee, the dark and bitter liquid giving her some measure of warmth in the cold air. People were streaming past her now, and all going in the same direction. She could see the cultists among them, some simply following along with the rest of the herd, some scanning the crowd. She knew who they were scanning for and as one man walked past her she grabbed at his arm. "Hey, what's happening?"

The man just stared at her for a moment before jerking his clothes free. "They found a SeeD agent hiding out at some bar. They're going to-" The rest of the sentence was lost as the crowd swept past him. From her calm bank on the sidewalk she stared after him, struck dumb. It didn't take a genius to finish his sentence for him. She traded a glance with Raijin. "I cannot be true."

Raijin nodded. "They're going fishing Fu. Wonder who they're using as bait. Want to go see?"

She knew it would do them no good. Known from the first time the man Nerva had appeared on the screen with his poisoned tongue. Dollet was being cleansed and converted all at once, and anybody who tried to halt that process was going to be dealt with. Even if it was Zell or Nida – and there was no way, _no way_ it could be – they couldn't risk it. They were a cog in a machine, and a machine requires all its cogs to work. She knew all this.

Went anyway.

* * *

><p>"<em>I like your hair."<em>

_She stood, ignoring the offered hand of the boy. She sniffed and wiped the blood from her mouth and the dirt from her face. "Go away." Her voice came out strong and even without a hint or the pain she felt in her side and head. She brushed her hair off and felt the dirt come off from where they hadn't rubbed it in. _Here, you need some colour. _She had been lucky. The egg had cracked in their hands before they had tried to force it in._

"_Who were they?" The kid stared off where the girls had run away mistaking him for one of the Matrons. Some of the children assumed that the teachers and tutors at the orphanage would be allies against the bullies and tormentors that roamed the orphanage, brand new as it was. Few made the mistake a second time. They kept them clean and fed and that was the extent of what they wanted to care about. You brought yourself to their attention at your own peril._

_She didn't really want to answer but she can see he isn't going to just go away like everyone else. Fujin's been at the orphanage for a few years now ever since the…ever since the accident. "Just nobodies." Something in what she said must have been funny because the other kid smiled, although she can't imagine what it could have been. She's still young and getting used to the cold building, buried in the heart of Deling and ignored by most of its populace. A far cry from where she had ended up. Already though she can tell that the children who have been left here aren't like the friends she had to leave behind._

"_My name's Seifer. What's yours?"_

"_Fujin." She doesn't give him her last name. There isn't really much point anymore. It's not like anyone else in the world shares it._

"_How'd you get your hair like that?"_

_She'd asked her parents once and they had told her it was gee-net-ick, whatever that meant. She hadn't been satisfied with the answer. She had wanted to know why she couldn't have a normal hair colour like the other girls at the orphanage. Nobody had ever picked on her for the colour of her hair before. It had been a new experience and it had taken a little while to realise what they had been laughing at. After that she had simply stopped talking to them. Then the teasing had started. "It's just mine is all."_

"_Cool."_

_Words came slowly between them then, teased out of each other like unpicking the strands of an old rope. Seifer talked about the old orphanage he had come from and the people there. He made fun of it and everyone in it, the bossy girl who acted like his mother and the cry-babies he had for friends, but when he spoke and she looked closely she could see the need in his eyes. Whatever place he had come from it sounded like heaven compared to the dank stone house, the wood furniture rotten to the touch and cold all year round. In return she had told him the good things she remembered from her own life before it had been taken away from her._

"_We'll find something better than this," he had said once night, both of them sneaking out onto the roof. It was summer and the entire orphanage stank of decaying food and old water._

"_What?" she asked back._

"_There's a new place out there somewhere. I heard about it before I left. I'm going to go." He looked down at her and she could see the stars outlining him against the sky. "Come with me."_

_Of course she said yes._

* * *

><p>"<em>THIS MAN!"<em>

He shouted in short bursts; as if his words were bullets and he had to pause after a few so that he could more carefully aim them down at the crowd. Perhaps more worrying to Fujin than the man up on the wooden platform was the crowd itself. They weren't the maniacal frothing frenzy of a cult, but people who had done the same as she had and followed the general flow into the paved square. Normal people. But they weren't doing anything, or calling for the man to stop, or even looking around hoping that someone else would be the first to step in. They simply watched in mute acceptance. She found it eerie.

The man stood on the platform and shouted down at the crowd. He didn't even look like a frothing madman, the bearded and robed prophets of history. He was dressed in a shabby but serviceable suit, the armband the only thing that marked him as one of Nerva/Aimsland's little helpers. In one hand he held a wicked-looking butcher's knife, and in the other something that glinted as he moved. Beside him, kneeling in submission was a battered and bruised and shivering wreck. Whoever he had been, he was a ruin now. _"THIS MAN! HAS TURNED AGAINST HIS PEOPLE!"_ The cultist raised the fist above his head to reveal a poor reproduction of a SeeD symbol. Fujin had seen children's toys with better standards. The audience however reacted with a murmur that seemed to rush through it and grow stronger as it did so. _"THEY COME INTO OUR CITY! LIKE THIEVES! TO TAKE AWAY! WHAT IS OURS!"_

"Please…I didn't…" Fujin heard the weak plea and felt her hands tighten, looking for a weapon she had wanted to bring but had decided against as too risky. What she would have done if she had brought it she didn't dwell on. She had never wasted time thinking over the might-have-been's, but at that moment if she could have rewound time and told Irvine _screw it, I'm bringing my chakram_ she would have done it. The worst part, the really worst part, over and above the passive acceptance of the crowd or the mundanity of the man holding court on top of the wooden platform, was how utterly helpless she was to do anything. Yet still she wanted to run up there. She could be at the base of the platform without being spotted, probably up and by the man's side without drawing too much attention as all eyes fixed on him. Getting that knife away would be easy, a SeeD against a rabid dog, not much more dangerous than a civilian. Then…

_Then the guns would come out and you'd die up there. _She felt a hand fall lightly on her shoulder and shifted her head to see Raijin looking down on her. "Ain't nothin'," the big man said simply, and she understood he had been thinking the exact same thing.

"Don't…"

"_THIS IS OUR JUSTICE!"_ He swung.

She turned away. Fujin had seen blood and death, up close and personal and at a distance. She had watched as G- and B-Gardens had clashed and seen from a distance the flashes of red-on-blue that blood made against the SeeD uniform. She had dragged the body of a comrade out of a filthy sewer as he bled out over her clothes. She had felt her own eye as it had been ruined by a child's thoughtless cruelty, and the retribution he had received for it. But now she couldn't watch as one more wailing cry came out and for one half-second turned into a cough before being silenced. Instead she watched the crowd. They didn't cheer, or wave their arms or cry out in horror. They simply nodded, as if the man had made some sort of well-received statement or won some argument. In a way he had.

"Fujin."

"Not now," she whispered. It took a second for the voice behind the words to sink in, and she realised it wasn't Raijin's voice that had spoken to her. A hand reached out from the pressed flesh of the crowd and grabbed her and for a moment she felt fear lance through her and she imagined herself up on that platform, with the monster in the shape of an ordinary man towering above her, knife in hand. She followed the arm to its owner.

"Come on," Nida said as he pulled at her, and she allowed herself to be dragged off, grabbing Raijin in turn. The three of them formed a human chain that weaved and threaded its way out of the crowd, like swimmers leading each other to the shore. As they reached the outskirts she looked once more behind her. The grisly mess of the platform was hidden from sight, and the onlookers at the edge were already going back to their lives. Like cells that had sensed a threat and come together, turning rabid against the infection before dissipating into nothing. But they were always there in the background, waiting to coalesce again.

* * *

><p><em>It felt strange. Even aside from the pain. Even aside from the buzzing in her skull and the laughter that still rang in her ears. It felt like someone had tunnelled through her head with digging machinery and left a gaping pit behind that went through flesh and bone and instead of emerging on the other side somehow went deeper. She was on her knees, body cradled around itself as her hands held onto her face and neck as if something would fall off it were she to let go. She can hear a dull grinding over the buzz and it won't be until much later that she looks and sees that she was grinding her teeth together so hard they were almost crushing each other.<em>

_She can hear Seifer and the other boy driving off the last girl, who leaves with an expression somewhere between hurt and confused, somehow not realising what the problem was even as blood pooled onto the floor. She was the dumbest and the one who had handed the gang-leader the knife. The leader had run away minutes ago and will not return to the orphanage before Fujin and the others run away. She can feel a strong pair of hands lifting her up and trying to prise her hands away from her eyes, but she kicks and bites and eventually the scared matron gives in, in the face of the young girl's silent protest. She doesn't speak, just hisses of pure emotion to communicate pain and anger and sadness._

_In the infirmary that night Seifer and Raijin sneaked in as she sat there in the bed through the haze of whatever they had given her. Whatever it was it hadn't been enough and she had been staring at the ceiling for hours, sleep close enough to extend the minutes into hours but not close enough for her to sink into it's cold embrace. Seifer summed it all up in two words._

"_Fuck this."_

_It hadn't been loud or dramatic. They had simply left with the clothes on their backs and some food stolen from the meagre stores. The air outside had been cold and sharp as she breathed in and by the time the black brick walls of the orphanage were out of sight she had recovered enough clarity to stand on her own. She'd stared down at the snow piling up on the ground and held out a hand against it, a black haze in her peripheral vision where light and colour had once been._

"_Are you okay Fu?" That was the first time he'd used the name and it had stuck ever since._

"_Yeah."_

_They hid on a train, riding as close to the sea as they could, stealing what they need. Practise at the old house where the food had never been enough but the kitchens guarded badly had given them enough skills so that they ate every other day at least. When the ocean had finally come into view they had walked along the sand dunes until the squat shape of Dollet came into view, the city hunkered down against the tide like a man pushing himself up against a wall to get out of the wind. It reminded them of themselves. They'd paid their way onto a boat going east with the little money Seifer – never Raijin, his heart simply hadn't been in it – had managed to steal, and Fujin's first voyage across the ocean had been on the steel deck of a merchantman heading to Fisherman's Horizon, with one stop. Balamb was warm even in the winter as the clouds dodged around it, and they had walked the distance from the dock inland to their destination, Seifer leading the way down the paved roads. Only a few vehicles had passed them on the way, and none of them had stopped to wonder why three small children were wandering the grasslands of the island._

_At first Fujin had wondered what kind of accident could have formed the small mountain, so alone in the grass surrounding it. When they had gotten closer and saw Balamb Garden for what it truly was she had been awestruck into silence, even as Seifer jumped up and down laughing like a boy on Christmas day. Some part of her brain, maybe the part that the vicious girls had torn out in those final days of the orphanage, hadn't believed her eyes. It was only when they had come close enough to see the people coming and going, the gates before them the final barrier, that she had understood that she would never go back to those cold stone walls._

_She hugged the white walls of the school like a lost child finding its parent, and wept._

* * *

><p>"Are you crazy? You know the risks you took coming here?"<p>

She blinked and the thoughts she had been marshalling since Nida had grabbed her hand were swept clean out. Finally when she realised he was actually waiting for a response she marshalled her words. "Zell Dincht you are the last person to talk of risks."

"Xu sent you?"

"She did. She would have come herself but she has problems of her own. Problems you have added to." She glanced outside the window. There was nothing there to raise her alarm, no stampeding crowd or gangs of roving cultists. Yet somehow it felt more like enemy territory than Deling City ever had. "What have you been doing?"

Zell shrugged and tried to look as apologetic as he could. "Yeah I know I screwed up, and I'm going to make it up to her, you can tell her that."

"Report, soldier," Fujin said. The softness of her voice somehow only reinforced the order within the words. Some leader ruled with shouted commands and the stick. SeeD preferred reasonableness and the carrot. But as a mercenary organisation the stick was always there. Zell took a deep breath, and started.

"It's gotten bad, but you can't see just how bad from the outside. At first after the duchess and those poor kids were murdered it was business as usual. Nerva's dumb bullshit aside nothing really changed much. That lasted a day."

"Aimsland."

Zell nodded. "He came in at night probably, not sure how. He didn't make any big speeches and he doesn't leave the palace but everyone who counts – the cultists basically - knows he's here. A few days after the coup now – hell may as well call it what it is, the kid duke sure ain't doing much – and a _lot_ of people started coming into the city, and a lot of them were wearing those white armbands. Nerva's little speech worked I'll tell you that."

"What do we know?"

Zell took a deep breath. "It's all second-hand info but it all matches up. They talk a lot about him, what he's going to do for the 'faith'. About bringing back the angels and the world closer to Hyne. He's doing good work in Dollet, told the cultists to play nice and helpful with the citizens here. They have a church set up and the priests are bringing in new people all the time, converts. They love the man, whoever the crazy sonofabitch is they'd walk through fire for him. It was the same back in Centra. He tells them to do these crazy things and they _do_ them."

She thought back to Edea, how the possessed sorceress had held a city in the palm of her hand. "Mind-control, magical influence?"

Zell shook his head. "No, it's just…I can't explain it, but it doesn't _feel_ like people here are going around with para-magic, we saw that shit in the Second War and you could always tell. It's like they're afraid if they don't do what he wants he'll stop wanting them. Like he's Hyne come down to earth and he's saying '_yeah, you've been right all this time, now let's convince all these other dudes. Oh also there's some bad guys on this island want to kill your goddess, so we need to get them first._"The blonde man shrugged, as if the whole thing was beyond him. It might have been. There was a stubborn innocence in Zell's heart that told him; humans can't _really_ do all these horrible things to each other, and it fought the rational part of his mind that tried to explain otherwise. He really just didn't see why people couldn't all get on together, even as he was smashing their faces in.

Fujin had no problems knowing why the cultists had taken Aimsland as their leader. _They want to believe in their dreams, Dincht, and this man is not only saying that their dreams are right, but promising to make them all come true. _The enemy, within the same city as her. Would that she had a face to go with the name, and a weapon capable of striking through those thick stone walls to reach him within. "Any other information?"

The man shrugged and for a second he was again the young boy – barely a man – that had ridden t-boards around the Garden and not known when to keep his mouth shut. "Hell Fu I don't know much. I can't even leave the damn house."

She had met the owners of the house. A pair of middle-aged people who had nodded when Zell had brought the pair to their home and stayed quiet. He'd whispered at her surprise. _They lost a son, to Galbadia, during the war._ Some people still remembered SeeD as they really were, it appeared. She was glad of it and had thanked them as they had closed the door fearfully behind them. God knew what would happen to them if they were found sheltering real SeeDs. The fate of the man on the platform would be tame by comparison, she was sure of that much.

"They're digging in for the long haul ma'am," Nida said, taking over the monologue. "The city walls are being rebuilt where Galbadia tore them down and they're building new ships at the dock. Soldiers everywhere, and half of them are cultists these days. Whatever they're planning they're taking it seriously, seriously enough they're willing to concentrate all their personnel here."

Fujin took in the information like a sponge, words flashing across her mind as Nida spoke them, filling a diagram in her mind, a blackboard she scribbled with words and lines linking them, trying to tease out whatever plan these madmen were working towards. _Defences. Army. Boats. Guards._

_Boats?_ "What boats?"

The same thing had clearly been on the man's mind. "Fishing boats mainly, they're tearing stuff out and putting big cabins on top, room for dozens. Armour on the sides, enough to stop small-arms fire."

Quiet for Zell's speech, Raijin got Nida's meaning instantly. "Troop transports."

Nida nodded. "They're building a fleet, a fleet they really want to take somewhere. Somewhere they're expecting trouble."

Fujin took it and ran with it, adding it to mental blackboard. There was another there next to it, a map of the world. Dollet lay on the eastern coast of the western continent, hundreds of miles of fields and hills between itself and anywhere else. It traded with the other city-states for food and materials via train. In the past she remembered, that hadn't been the case. The old empire's navy had been feared across the world, but simple fishing-boats converted into an armada wouldn't be able to risk the open seas for long, and certainly wouldn't have the range to reach any other city. She was about to ask why Dollet would build a fleet of paper tigers when she realised that there was one place they _could_ reach, a small island perfectly situated between the green west and the cold east.

"Balamb."

Nida just shook his head, an expression on his face she found hard to read. She had never known the man very well, her exile from Garden coming long before he had achieved his current position. She could respect the man's intelligence, if not his common sense. "I thought of that, but there's one more thing about them. They're not just putting armour on those things. Zell had to tell me what they were when I told him."

"Hey," the man in question said. As if he was missing being a part of the conversation. "I know you all were in B-Garden but I _lived_ in Balamb all my life. I know ships and I know what kind of gear you need for them if you want to get to certain places. Only one thing you would do with a giant pointy metal brow on a boat."

She was about to ask what when some fragment of memory bubbled up and surfaced from the depths of her past. A man holding her gently against him as she sat on his shoulder. It was mile she could see for miles and miles from up there, and all to the horizon there were endless smooth wooden hulls arrayed on the ground, men crawling over them. Sparks flew from blowtorches and the sound of hammering was pervasive, like rain. _Someday this will be your kiddo._

"Icebreakers."

"No way," Raijin said. "_Trabia?"_

Fujin shook her head. It was breathtaking in its scope and ludicrous in its stupidity. Trabia was a wasteland, but it was also the gate to the southern plains, and there was only one thing worth noticing in that dry and dead land. "Esthar." She could almost have laughed, if doing so didn't hurt. "They want to invade Esthar?" Assuming they could cross a rough ocean. Assuming the troops would survive a march through the tundra. Assuming that Nerva and his shadowy master could even convince the nation to go to war with the metropolis. Assuming T-Garden didn't land on them with the fury of a thousand ogres.

Assuming all that, Laguna would be waiting for them, and he would pummel them into dust.

Zell was really grinning now. "If Aimsland wants to tangle with the big guy I don't see why we should interfere with them getting a righteous beat-down."

Fujin didn't share his enthusiasm. Besides that she had been charged with a mission, she had made a promise. One that she had every intention of keeping. At least one question had been answered, even if it had raised more questions. Principally among which was _how does he expect to do something so insane._ Esthar wasn't merely the strongest of the world's nations, it was on a level so far beyond Galbadia and Dollet they were practically in different eras.

"Aimsland isn't a stupid man. He must know there's no way of taking the city." She leaned against the wooden countertop and stared at the ceiling. "Something is missing." She viewed again the blackboard and map in her head, mentally looking from one to another like it was a giant jigsaw and trying to find the key piece that led from the current situation to an invasion of Esthar. She couldn't do it. She put it aside. "Quistis."

Zell's smile vanished. "Nothing."

"_Zell,"_ she half-sighed in disbelief.

He held up a hand to ward her off and she could see the frustration in his face. "There's been _nothing _since the coup Fujin, swear to God. Like she vanished into a black hole."

Raijin shifted uncomfortably on the wall he was leaned against. The words came out slowly, like he didn't want to say them. "Executed."

Zell's response was vehement. "No way, _no way_. Don't even think that. She's alive in there." The words came out of him like bitterness. "I just got no god damn idea where."

Fujin stood up straight and tried to bring forth all her position and influence. It wasn't Xu's total command or Squall's inspiring rhetoric, but it was close enough for the four of them. "Sleep now, tomorrow is another day. We're stronger than we were."

"We will find a way."

* * *

><p>Later, after everything was over and the dust had settled and blood and bodies been cleaned away, she would look at those two boards in her head and give herself some small comfort that there was no way she could have seen it coming. The jigsaw had been impossible to solve.<p>

She simply hadn't been given all of the pieces.


	23. Morden Aimsland

He stared up and at the stars and wondered. He wondered whether there was a world up there that stared back down at him. Maybe there was a world up there that wasn't some pale joke, a world not coated in the filth and rot he was forced to wallow in on this one. Whether there was a world that was correct.

Not that he was prepared to give up on this one of course. The plans he'd set spent the years weighing and plotting had finally been set into motion around him, the pawns forced down the routes he had planned for them and the board looking exactly as it should. There were no other players, only himself. Not that they thought of themselves that way. They tried their best to rise to his level but inevitably they fell back down as they found themselves re-directed, forced back and back into their assigned roles.

As the ones below did. He looked down from the rooftop onto the street and could almost see the white armbands of his loyal men and women walking through his city. _His_ city now. The duke was malleable enough and his own upbringing had brought him most of the way into the ranks of the Faithful. He trusted Nerva no farther than he could throw the man but the clergy would bring the boy the rest of the way, and until then he would remain in the sea-town to watch over everything. From the palace he could look down over the city and the countryside beyond like an angel soaring over the lands, and while blasphemous the metaphor appealed to him. If only he had the vision of same.

He knew they were down there. Imagined he could see the corrupting stink as they walked free through the town. A minor mis-step that had forced him to move the board around somewhat, and he could feel his muscles tense and his grip harden on the stonework as he thought of it. Instead of running back to their master the Dincht boy and the other one had instead dug in, and no amount of effort by his men had been able to uncover and extract them from the bolt-hole the two SeeDs had thrown themselves into. Nerva's reassurances had rang hollow even as he said them and he had been forced to admit that they weren't likely to be found. Aimsland could only reassure himself that he had already gotten everything he wanted out of the pair, their tame ice goddess now in his possession and already put to work. He had what he wanted, so let them scurry about. Pieces thrown away couldn't really affect anything, no matter if they had been a queen or a pawn.

"Yes?" He turned even as the man cleared his throat. It paid to keep up appearances, and his meagre power was useful enough for it. He might pay for it later, even something as simple as this, but he relied upon it for so much of his mystique. Would that he had the powers of the woman now locked in the dark. Even as it strained against her body to escape she held it back, afraid of her birthright. Such a waste.

The young neophyte couldn't have been older than sixteen. Young enough to have avoided the worst excesses of the First War, old enough to have been directly affected by the Aftermath. He wondered what it had been. The template for all the members his age was roughly the same. Galbadian or Dolletian or Centran, they had lost a family member or a loved one to the physic plague created by the Archangel's death and had reached out for someone to blame, and there Aimsland had stood, pointing towards the SeeDs and saying _these people are to blame, help me make it right_. "The duke wants to…he requests your presence. Umm. In the throne-room."

The boy seemed almost overwhelmed, the armband displayed proudly on his upper arm still bright and new. Morden swept past him without another word, just a small nod for. _Let's see what our little prince wants._ As he walked down the spiral stairs to the palace proper he winced as a shot of pain ran through his body, and he made sure the boy was out of sight before he leaned against the cool stone for support. _Damn this weakness._ _If only…a few more seconds in the other direction and I would have been first…_ But it was no use cursing over the past, ranting at something out of reach. The past was unchangeable and even if he put his abilities together with _hers_ he would never be able to change even the smallest event of it.

_But someone could._

He had to remind himself how far he still had to go, how much there was left to accomplish, that no matter what he had managed so far there were still hurdles that could trip them up at any point. His smothered his gleeful anticipation under a blanket of calm and walked into the throne-room. Everything would come in time. The world would be returned to its proper place. But even as his face returned to its normal impenetrable state he couldn't resist a small smile. Names ran through his head and as he looked at them in turn the thought went with it:

_They cannot stop me now._

* * *

><p>Nuo still wouldn't sit on the throne. None of the words Morden had spoken had been able to coax him up there. He'd argued that the people expected a ruler to sit on the symbol of his rule. He'd argued that they would not <em>respect<em> him unless he showed his willingness to truly accept his birthright. He'd argued that it would undermine his position, that it would give SeeD the excuse they would need to invade and replace him, saying _he is no true ruler._ None of it worked, and Alec Nuo still would not sit on his aunt's throne.

Even as he approached, the young man continued to stare at the windows. The jittery panic of the first few days had gone, replaced by a simple dead-eyed acceptance. Whether this was better or worse was something they'd find out in time. "Mr Aimsland." He still sounded like a boy.

He bowed low as he replied. There was nobody else around to see, so let the young man have his deferene. "Your grace."

"Do you have anything on the other SeeDs in the city?"

_Your city. _Your _city. _But he couldn't force the issue and he knew it Better that the Faithful should have a safe place to incubate and grow strong before they burst forth. Camps in the deserts and cramped warehouses were no good, like splints on a broken but mending body, but no replacement for real care. The Faithful needed a place they would be safe, and so much better that their sanctuary have some legal protection, some other force looking out for them. There was a sleeping giant to the east, and Esthar always kept one eye and one ear on the rest of the world. Better that if things went wrong they should remain merely a group within the city, rather than the rulers of the city. Loire wouldn't dare destroy an entire country simply to swat the growth inside it, no matter how cancerous. "No. We're looking but they're hiding very well."

"And Trepe? Is she…"

He cursed and had to set his face in stone to stop the emotion from showing. Would that he could go back and change one thing, the two would never have met. The woman had made some impression on the young man that the butchering of his aunt and younger siblings had been unable to erase. He wondered how she had done it. It certainly wasn't fear or lust, Quisty was too noble to use her power or her body to control others. "She is being treated well enough, for what she did." A little reinforcement never hurt. He looked around to see whether Nerva or his little gray girl were in the room. Neither were, and he hoped what he had said was true. Almas was no risk but Leonard was like a rabid dog. Kettil had been right. The man was an unwelcome variable in the whole clockwork engine of his plan, a gear that moved around only barely doing what he wanted. His motivations were obvious and base and rotten, but they made him unpredictable. There were no emotions so varied as love and hate. The girl at least could be trusted to do what she had been bred for. The man not so much. Morden kept careful record of whenever Leonard Nerva tried to visit his prisoner, and he was never allowed to be alone with Quistis. Whether he wanted to kill her or simply humiliate her, he wasn't going to get the chance. Let him think that he'd have her one day. He could dream all he wanted but such a precious jewel would never be wasted on someone like him.

Aimsland decided then and there, on the floor of the throne-room, that Nerva was going to find an unhappy ending, no matter what he had promised the angry young SeeD-reject. He was jerked out of his reverie by the stare of the boy-duke, and realised he had missed something. "I'm sorry your grace I…"

"I asked," the boy said, his breeding coming through a little more sharply at being forced to repeat himself, "what you're doing to find them."

"Everything my men can," he replied. Almost true. Ninety percent, at least. He had his Faithful at the gates with the other Dollet soldiers and they were watching for the almost-certain infiltrators that must be weaving their way into the city even now. No telling who they would send. He almost wished it would be Xu Tyynes, a desperate rescue for her maiden in distress, but he knew the woman was too smart for that. She'd sit in Deling miles away and throw her javelins at him like a trained Olympian, never coming close enough to risk harm to herself. He'd guard against her strikes as best he could.

"That's all." Alec raised a hand up to his mouth, seemed to realise he was doing it and tried to disguise the gesture as a cough. Morden could see his nails had been bitten down almost past his hand. _Let the boy worry. So long as he's afraid he won't think too hard on whom exactly is protecting him._

He walked from the room, leaving the young ruler to his worries. As he passed the men and women of the palace the white armbands glinted from their shoulders, and some of them went as far as to bow to him. Everything was going according to plan. He felt like he was walking on air.

He was brought abruptly down to earth when he felt a tug on his sleeve and turned to see her standing there. She'd made no noise approaching him. For all that finding her had been an incredible piece of luck – the archangel herself smiling down on his task, he liked to think – Almas Jordin made him a little nervous. Not the nervous fear of a man standing before a stronger being, or the nervous fluttering of someone speaking to the object of their love. The nervous glances of the magician who has many plates in the air and has noticed that one of them has a slight wobble. Not enough to be visible to anyone else, but enough to signal the eventual toppling, if an eye wasn't kept on it. Morden Aimsland paid very careful attention to Almas Jordin. She was too valuable to be allowed to fall down and break. "Yes?"

Hyne, he had been so lucky to find her. Without her he could still have brought vengeance down on his enemies, could still have brought some peace to his memories. But when he had finally made sense of who and what she was, what Nerva had unknowingly brought with him to their deal, he'd realised that he could have everything he dreamed of.

She didn't speak so much as the air carried her desire directly into his ear. He knew that the nervousness _she_ was feeling was different from his own but she made herself clear well enough and he tried to sound as soothing and reassuring as he could when he spoke. "Of course my girl. Whenever you like." She walked away from him as quickly as she could, making no sound as she vanished back into depths of the palace. He was trying to break whatever emotional lock Nerva had on the girl but it was slow going. Speaking of whom.

The man's head whipped around as he entered the room. Morden avoided the outer passages of the palace as much as he could but he had to pass through them to get from his room to the library, and he swore Nerva made it his business to get in his way as much as possible.

The man didn't bother to greet him. "Aimsland. I want a word," he barked. He didn't notice the angry glares the Faithful in the room gave him either. A stupid man who had used what little power he had well, and was now fooling himself that that small amount put him on an equal level with those above him.

"Yes?"

"You've been avoiding me." _True._ "I want to know what we're doing next."

"We're staying put until _you_ have eliminated our little greenery problem."

Nerva wasn't mollified. In the days after the coup he'd become insolent – even more insolent – and at times downright paranoid himself, not without reason. The men he had hired or connived to work for him to make the coup happen had silently and gradually been replaced by – or converted into – Morden's own Faithful. Aimsland's men guarded the duke now, and the rest of the palace belonged to him as well. Nerva was finding himself increasingly alone inside the massive palace. "Don't pull your poetic shit with me. I won't be shut out of this."

Morden had to resist the urge to just find Kettil and say _I'm tired of this nuisance, remove him._ The man in black would do it with a smile. Well, almost a smile. As far as Aimsland knew Kettil never smiled at anything anymore, except the locket around his neck. He thought no-one knew, but Morden had seen him doing it once. He could guess whose picture it was, the poor sad man. "And I have no intention of doing so." A flat-out lie. If Nerva knew what was truly going on, he would break and run in a second, or break and lash out. Morden wanted to avoid that though, while Almas still took orders from him. "We're holding here until we can truly pacify Dollet. And for the Archangel's sake please don't bring up our prisoner. She's necessary." He liked bringing up his faith around the man. It seemed to annoy Nerva an improbable amount.

"To what, to keep Balamb from shelling us? SeeD don't even have a fleet, just a big damn stone house they lug around the ocean someday. If we slit her throat now they'd shout and whine and do nothing. What are you afraid of, Morden?"

_You arrogant insect. I'll break you for that._ "What I'm afraid of, Leonard, is that you are letting your desires get ahead of your caution. When the time is right, we move. When the time is right, we take over. When the _time_ is _right_ we'll all come out of this with exactly what we deserve." _And no-one else will ever have to listen to your bleating again. What place you could have in the new world is beyond me._ He adjusted his jacket. "I have work, as do you. Stay the course Mr Nerva." _It will be a pleasure to watch you burn._

He could see the day before him, still so far away but so much closer now that one of the main keys to its arrival was in his hand now. Never mind that the SeeDs still ran free under the shadows of his new city. Never mind that the Archangel had been cut down by mere humans and her memory tainted by the mindless organisation that dared to stand in his way. Never mind that her replacement was an unwilling vassal, corrupted by mere feelings of love into denying herself. He could look ahead and see the shining blue future, a future free of everything rotten and pristine as ice. That his methods were considered harsh was beside the point, he knew he would be vindicated in the end.

_And I will finally have what is mine,_ the old grudge whispered. _What I was denied by mere accident I will take back with my own hands. Even now I can feel the sounds from below. _The sounds of rebirth.

He was about to return to his quarters when he heard the footsteps and paused, foot steady as a rock halfway through the motions. The sound was like thunder in the quiet of the halls and it was coming right for him. He relaxed when the doors were pushed open by an exhausted young acolyte. He didn't know who else it could have been; all the palace guard loyal to the old duchess had died in the coup or been quietly taken care of, and the only threats were hundreds of miles away in Dollet. Still though the thought of the SeeDs so close and unwatched annoyed him. Unlike Nerva he didn't underestimate his opposition. Kettil had met Dincht in Centra and been impressed, and he himself knew exactly how good SeeD were. They had killed his goddess, after all.

_They'll pay. By Hyne and his angels I'll make them suffer. Then the real work can begin._

He felt the joy a child does on the night before he can unwrap his gifts. He had never had that childhood. The Christmas snows he remembered were cold and huddled in forgotten ruins and houses, and presents being whatever food they'd managed to scrape together or steal. Then had came the labs and the white rooms, and whenever he thought of them, what they had tried to do, what they had taken from him, he felt an anger so deep and all-encompassing he couldn't think. He thought of Kettil as a sentimental fool but if that was true than he was no different. And unlike Kettil, he had something other than memories. All he needed was time. The day would come and he would wave his hand and turn it all back, make the world right again, turn SeeD into dust and dump their dead into the ruined shells of their Gardens. Make the snows turn back and the white spires of that hateful city crumble into ruin. Make the world right again.

_Father, mother. we'll make you so proud._


	24. Xu Tyynes

Some of you may remember a similar scene from this chapter in my last story. Back then I found myself at a loss for a certain denouement and needed to cannibalise something from my Big .Txt File 'O Ideas. Here it is, in it's original form.

* * *

><p>She stared out of the window of the jeep, her head rested on her hand, and sighed as the rain continued to pummel down onto the streets below, reducing the once-pristine white snow to a sloppy grey mush that made travel treacherous and made obscene slurping sounds at the feet of those who walked in it. The end of the year approached and the dry winter weather was beginning to sense the approach of a wet spring. Even though they should have been months away the cloudbanks of the western continent had come home, and were making their presence felt with a downpour that had started and seemed endless. Xu looked out and saw people rushing back and forth, trying to find a balance between going as fast as they could to get out of the rain and slow enough to avoid tripping in the slippery mire. A delicate act and even as she watched a man pin-wheeled his arms in a hopeless struggle with gravity, and fell. An apt metaphor for her own mood.<p>

She was pulled back in her seat as the jeep came to a stop, and as she slid the door open the sound of the rain turned from a dull background into a roar. She saw the driver holding out something and took the raincoat gratefully, slipping it on as she crawled out and into the gray dusk, where they waited for her. Neither of them seemed particularly miserable or even bothered by the deluge, and she wondered how to get her hands on one of those thick Trabian greatcoats.

Selphie could have been standing there during a summer sun. "Heya!"

_Does nothing get on this girl's nerves? _But that wasn't fair and she chided herself even as she thought it. Selphie had shown plenty of worry when the bad news from Dollet had come in. She simply never let herself dwell on what she couldn't change. Only on what she could. "Evening Selphie." _And why did you call me out to this god-forsaken place. "_You found something?"

She had asked the couple to stay in Deling and check on the defences of the city-state, and they had taken to the task with enthusiasm and SeeD competence. In the two weeks since the coup, they had toured half the city's barracks and armouries and spent countless hours on the road, travelling between the remaining bases of the militant nation. The paperwork had all crossed her desk and she had seen nothing that she could have improved upon. Whatever skills Selphie and Irvine had learned in Trabia they were serving them well here. _Hell Xu all we have to deal with here is other people. It's a cakewalk. 'Least here the attackers don't eat you after they kill you._ Finally though a request had come through, but it hadn't been what she was expecting. Instead of a request for help it had been much more abrupt, and the message had come directly from them, no other intermediaries or messengers. Whatever it was, they wanted it kept quiet.

The three stood there in the gloom, surrounded the dark metal. It was a barracks on the outskirts of the city, long disused by the look of it. The building, a simple steel box with a pair of doors and a fuel-depot nearby with brown spatters on the metal as rust had infiltrated and begun to eat away at it. The few vehicles still there sat low in the ground as their tires had dissolved away.

"That was what got us suspicious," Irvine said.

It looked like any of the dozen barracks scattered around the city. At first the presence of so much military equipment and personnel within the city had surprised her, until she had been reminded – by Seifer of all people – that Deling's history had never leaned towards the democratic.

_Defending the people against the enemy sure. Defending the rulers against the people too._

She looked around for any sign of suspicion, and finally gave up. "Alright, you got me. Spill it."

Irvine walked them over the doors as they talked, and when he tapped on the huge steel slabs it didn't make a hollow sound, but a solid dull _thud._ "Look at these things. They could stop a tank." He brushed a hand over it and it was only then Xu noticed what had been staring her in the face the whole time. The cowboy talked on. "No rust on the door at all. In fact I'd bet if we took a wire brush to this whole building we'd find the rust wasn't even that deep. All these vehicles that still work are pristine, and only the ones out here are broke as hell. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make this place look abandoned."

"It's camouflage." She frowned. "But for what?"

"Somebody wanted this place to look old and disused, and they spent a lot of time and equipment to get it that way." He couldn't resist the smile on his face as Xu and Selphie watched on indulgently. He clearly couldn't wait to tell them.

"And you know why."

The grin turned into a real smile. "Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly." He pushed the doors open, and they slid aside with the silence of a well-oiled machine.

* * *

><p>"So how angry was Squall anyway?"<p>

Xu looked through the empty barracks. All around her was the same faux-ruin as the outside; rust painted onto the metal and equipment thrown haphazardly around, even though the doors were squeaky-clean and worked perfectly, and the security cameras still shined. "Furious," she muttered as she wiped a finger against the wall. Brown flecks came away leaving behind the sheen of new steel. _What the hell is going on with this place?_ She stood again. "Mainly with himself."

It had been a sight to behold. It had taken herself and Seifer _and_ another staffer to stop him leaping from the bed and rushing out into the night. She hadn't even gotten a chance to explain; he had opened his eyes, saw her expression and simply knew. Thank Hyne she had covered her tracks well that night or she had no idea what Squall might have done to her. _I found your love and I let her go._

_Rinoa with the hell you're putting him through you had better deliver._

Finally after minutes of struggle and argument Xu had sighed and simply told the orderlies to release him. Squall had looked at her as if she were a madwoman and left. He had gotten three steps from the door when he collapsed to his knees, Rinoa's sorcery having left him with all the coordination of a man punched in the head. He had serious concussion. For all that though he had still wanted to go out after her. She had shook her head and marvelled at the man's bull-headedness, even as a smaller part of her cheered him on and reminded her snidely. _You should have done the same thing._ She had shaken it off. For all that emotion might have ruled man's heart, Xu kept hers shackled in cold logic.

"I wish we could have been there for him," Irvine said. He and Selphie had been out when Xu had opened the door to find their commander sprawled out against the mansion walls.

Xu shook her head as they walked through the installation. Everywhere was the same; paper-thin layers of rust and old busted technology covering the fact that they were standing in a building that could have shaken off bomb-blasts. Something had been kept in here. She wished she knew what it was. There was one man who might know, but she was loath to go see him. Let him rot in that pampered prison. "Nothing you could have done. She's vanished." She just hoped the woman wasn't doing anything stupid, like going to Dollet. "It-"

Selphie looked up from the window when Xu stopped mid-sentence. "What's up?"

Xu stared at the structure before her and smiled as she ran the numbers in her head. _Oh, you clever old men._ She turned to the other two SeeDs, brushing a hand over a wall as she did so. "Look out the window would you, and tell me how thick this wall is."

Selphie slid the window closest to the wall up and stared down the building. "It goes on for a little while more." Her eyes widened as she realised what she had just said, and for a moment she looked ludicrous as she quickly bobbed her head in and out of the window. "The room doesn't stop here."

Irvine grinned like a child finally solving a rubik's puzzle. "Let's find out why."

It didn't take long. Within a few minutes they had a pile of rust and ash at their feet, and in front of them the thin lines of the door that had been disguising itself as the wall of the room. "Well, ain't that a thing."

"Where do you think it goes?" Selphie asked, one arm looped around Irvine's.

Xu stood there. She told herself she could go back to the mansion, haul out as many men and weapons as she could, and make a professional search of it. She could methodically tear down the building to reveal the secrets buried underneath. She could take days in this mystery box. She did none of these things.

_I'm tired of being the professional. _She gestured to the couple and they followed her back to the door of the room. She made some calculations about what she knew about ballistics, what she knew about the distance shrapnel could travel, what she knew about Irvine's weapon of choice. It was safe enough. Probably. "SeeD Kinneas."

"Ma'am?"

"Tear this thing down."

"Yes ma'am."

It didn't take long. He didn't even have to aim. Selphie and Xu sheltered behind the door as the pulse rounds flew through the air like shreds of pure force – which they pretty much were – and slammed into the door, the pulse rounds exploding on contact with the steel. Xu tried to glance around as Irvine fired but was blinded by the light, and even the gunman himself had his head turned away. Even blind his aim was perfect. At first the steel blackened, and bubbled, and finally simply began to melt away as the heat and force of the custom rounds went through. At the end when the smoke and noise faded they stood before a hole in the wall, and Xu was the first back inside to see her handiwork. Ignoring Irvine's word of caution she stepped in and over the charred steel and into the room beyond.

Irvine stared gobsmacked as he followed her through. "Wow. This is…"

Xu didn't speak. The hidden door had been inches thick, and Irvine's explosive rounds had barely managed to get through it. The room beyond was near spotless, only the dust floating in from their violent entrance spoiling it. She recognised the smell of chlorine and acids that permeated the air like a sickness. In the centre was a single spiral staircase, leading down. This was what the wall had been hiding. "This is a laboratory." _A hidden laboratory. _The room they stood in looked like the entrance to a fort. Slits in the walls opposite for guns to mark any intruders and kill as they entered. An inches-thick door more like to be used in a bank than a barracks. "They didn't want anyone coming in here."

"Or anything coming out," Selphie said. "I wonder what's inside." Her eyes were lit up already and she was staring across the room hungrily, as if the next door called out to her. "Come on Xu, what's the worst that could happen?"

She didn't know. It was exactly the kind of answer designed to infuriate her, but she had already taken the first step, and the steps after were easier. She paused for one second as her hand rested against the cool metal, logic getting its second wind at the last moment. "Just a moment." She turned and strode out, but had returned before Selphie even had a chance to get impatient.

"What was _that_ all about?"

"Insurance." She gestured at the door. "After you."

Gleefully Selphie pushed it open, and they descended into the white maze.

* * *

><p>"This is unbelievable. How did nobody ever find out. How did <em>we<em> never find out? We've practically torn down this city and built it up again and we never found anything like this."

Irvine had been repeating the same few phrases as they walked. Xu would have told him to be quiet but the man seemed to need to talk. Honestly, she was inclined to agree with the man. She had come over during the Aftermath, when Dollet had retreated back to their own borders, and the city had been a wreck.

"What do you think they were doing here?"

"And where's the staff?" Selphie was peering in through every window as they passed. Even just walking through was taking long enough, no way they could explore all of the side-corridors and rooms as they went. Through darkened windows Xu and Selphie could see equipment more suited to a medical school than a hidden military lab. The endless white was eerie, and she could hear the hum of machinery in her ears, just loud enough to set her head ringing. She thought back to the dusky room, the generals staring at her like she was so much dirt on their boots even as she rebuilt their city for them. She had been a slip of a girl yet she had thrown their tattered authority back in their faces. She could have simply taken it from them then, claimed Deling for SeeD, and nobody would have batted an eye. Dollet would have been happy at the end of their nemesis, Esthar would have been annoyed but Kiros would have brought Laguna around eventually. Trabia simply wouldn't have cared.

_Would it have stopped any of this?_

_We're not rulers, _Squall had told her when they had walked from the dim room and back into the sun. That summer seemed so far back now, lost to a history-eating fog. As she and Irvine struggled and strained to push open the door marked TESTING, using the butt of Irvine's gun as leverage (_mind the finish Xu this thing cost me a week's pay)_ she wondered whether they had made the right decision.

"Oh." Selphie looked in as she and Irvine gasped for breath. "Here they are."

Xu didn't throw up only because years of being a SeeD had immured her heart (and stomach) to violence. That didn't mean she couldn't look into the space before her and see the absolute carnage that must have taken place. Red sprays of dried blood covered the walls and beds, and encrusted pools of the dark liquid had run across the floors. Someone had taken the effort to sweep up the bodies but either time or panic had stopped them from doing anything else. She could look at any point in the room and see the last remnants of whatever horror had visited this place. The beds had pools of blood on them and torn cloth through the sheets. Whoever had used them last had been stabbed as they laid there.

"What un Hyne's name happened here?"

Xu was already walking through the scene, her boots making obscene crunching noises as they stepped on the crusts of dried blood that dotted the place. Even the ceiling had not been spared. Black scorch marks across the desks acted as bright red signs and she swept dust and ashes from the first one she came to, to uncover heaps of half-burned paper. Their luck maybe, that whoever had tried to clean and sterilise the evidence of what had happened here had been utterly incompetent. Words tumbled across her view as she shuffled them, forming half-realised phrases she could barely make sense of. Like jigsaw pieces thrown around the room by an angry child, there was a complete picture here, if only she could grasp it.

"Xu."

She turned and caught Irvine's glance. He looked more worried than she ever remembered seeing him. Even as they had ran from Deling all those years ago and returned to a Garden in civil war she couldn't remember seeing him look this worried. "What is it?"

Wordlessly he handed her the piece of paper, and she read it. Seconds later she wished she hadn't. The faint hum of the still-working electricity in the air turned into a pounding roar that forced its way from her eardrums into her skull, and she had to reach out a hand to steady herself before she fell to the floor. Selphie's arm looped around her before she could reach it.

"Xu! What's wrong?"

_I should have burned it all the ground and salted the earth._

She looked around the room. The labs. The secrecy. Enough armour to keep out a bomb-blast. But she had been wrong and Irvine had been right. None of it was to keep invaders out, it had been to keep the subjects in. "Read it." She sat down on the nearest bed, ignoring the dried blood that pushed itself against her clothes. "Just read it."

* * *

><p>…<em>to our current efforts it is clear now that three paths lie open to us, but with only two considered worth following to their end. With the unfortunate lack of test subjects and the non-quantitative nature of the entities known variously as Espers, Eidolons or simply 'Guardian Forces' progress has been erratic and sub-standard. The closest example of the genus (a twin-linked being, possibly unique in this regard) is extremely powerful, uncooperative and is hostile on-contact (see after-action report GA-#762, autopsy report of same) and remains inside the ruins of its own accord. I suggest leaving it there. Other examples are hard to find or have already been acquired and hidden by that damned Kramer man.<em>

_Regarding our second line of enhancement our luck has increased considerably. Subjects B-1 and B-2 have been successfully re-captured (although the offspring somehow evaded our net leaving three fatalities in his wake) and so experiments will be resuming as soon as a stable holding vessel can be constructed (advise stronger safeguards considering death-toll of previous escapes. Let's not get complacent gentlemen). Similarities have been spotted in the DNA of the original B-class subjects and those samples taken from the GF 'Brothers' but this is probably sample-contamination and has been disregarded. Wherever they get their power from we have no intentions of it happening again, not after the last disaster._

_As for the final branch of experimentation progress has been rapid, albeit not in the desired direction. While we have a much greater knowledge now of the abilities and limitations of the power, we are no closer to duplicating it or it's abilities. Due to the re-capture of the Bs however we've learned much just from oral interrogation, and they've confirmed what we suspected; there _is_ a link between the two bloodlines, albeit not exactly to their benefit (why they ran, apparently). The degradation and failure of the S line can most likely be attributed to this fact. Several S-class subjects remain however, several young enough to be viable should further testing past the lifespan of the current subjects. (The pallid colouration or lack thereof seems to be a result of implantation of the S-gene without the presence of a B-class bloodline in nearby contact, and seems to be permanent. Frankly this doesn't concern me. This isn't the place for aesthetics, regardless of what General Barron talks about public relations.)_

_Find enclosed a list of subjects categorised by project type, status included._

_GF-class: Hate to say it Leland but the last subject died just after your inspection. This is going nowhere and I don't think that'll change soon. This isn't like breeding lions and tigers, this is like gods and ants. It's just not going to work._

_B-class: Male 23 E Calder (unstable), Male 21y D Meyers (unstable), Female 16y H Soyer (unstable), Male 13y B Osfray (unstable), Female 52y W Felna (unstable). Cloning and injection methods simply don't work. We need the pure bloodline. Thank god B1 and 2 have been recaptured. 2 shows signs of having given birth recently. Rotten luck we didn't catch her a few days earlier. Would be very interested to know the status of the missing boy and whether he has a little parcel with him. Let me know the possibility of finding him would you?_

_S-class: Female 22y R Conray (unstable, deteriorating rapidly), Female 19y K Caryal (stable), Female 15y A Jordin (stable), Female 35y L Palfry (unstable), Female 45y P Ingram (stable). None of them exhibit powers but the gene can be inserted without killing them. Most likely in the normal course of succession the powers would imprint the body with the gene when it entered. All we have right now is the container with none of said power. I'm hopeful though._

_On a more personal note let me thank you again for the chance to continue the work. I believe that regardless of the other general's opinions the lines can be made both viable for reproduction and permanent. They may never match the power of the original but as they say in Trabia quantity has a quality all of its own. I've heard the rumours. Don't let a bunch of religious maniacs stop you. Hope to see you at the club this weekend._

_They will thank us one day soon general; don't let them get you down, not even that brownnoser Car…_

* * *

><p>The rest was burned. Selphie shook the paper in her hands, as if doing so would cause some meaning to fall out of it and onto the floor in front of them. She looked as shocked as Xu did. "No way." She looked up as Irvine put a hand around her shoulder and for a few seconds the three of them stood there in silence, regarding the room and all its horrors in a new light. The terminology might have been beyond them but the shape of the ideas behind it had been clear as day.<p>

"I remember," Irvine said slowly, "back when I was in G-Garden they used to have us cut up dead animals for biology and anatomy. Guess they just took it a step further here." He shook his head sadly. "I hope the poor souls stuck down here got a few good shots in before those bastards gunned them down."

She could have laughed. Whether at the horrors that man seemed so easily to do against his own, other people separated from them only by a border on a map that said; We are here, and They are there, and They are not like Us. At the screams men of science ignored even as they wrote down pain and blood in their reports without so much as blinking, talking of their glorious future even as they snuffed those futures out. At the hubris of men and women that had written their names down here, as if expecting one day to be praised for this madness. At how useless she felt right there, sat in the middle of the human experimentation labs that had been under her nose the whole time, and she had never so much as suspected. "We need to go."

"God, I hear that," Irvine said, and she could hear the relief in his voice.

"We need some time to think about this. What are we going to do about can? What _can_ we do about this?"

They were halfway back to the surface, and the bloodless air of Deling City, when she spoke again. She glanced back once at the door leading to the labs, and shuddered. The hum of machinery was in there, and she couldn't imagine what else. Xu Tyynes wasn't a religious person, but she wondered whether enough suffering would tie a soul down to a place like that, make the very walls reek of blood and death for the rest of time. She held out the piece of paper she had taken, and pointed to the top of the page. To the date that was written there. And to the names that were written on it.

"We do our jobs."

* * *

><p>She didn't wait a day, or sleep on it for the night, or any of the other suggestions Irvine put forward. When they had returned to the mansion and Selphie had grabbed the nearest functionary and told him to go down to the old abandoned armoury <em>right<em> now she had walked right through them and to the room serving as their makeshift infirmary. Squall still lay there but merely sleeping now rather than unconscious, and she had stood over him as thoughts ran through her mind like molten steel. She had spoken only a few words.

_No more, Squall._

When the next day came she had met it without sleep. She had called them together out of their comfortable homes and waited for them in the long room of the presidential palace, now the final meeting place of the Galbadian government's last figures of authority.

"Gentlemen."

She surveyed them and felt acid in her stomach. The men sat around the table before her were cut from the same cloth, almost interchangeable like models all pressed from the same production line. They were old and rich and arrogant, and all of them had the lines and scars of people who had spent a lifetime under pressure. The generals of Galbadia had been all that remained after the death of Vinzer Deling and the disappearance of the Sorceress Edea, and it had been at their hands that the worst of the post-Second War oppression had been perpetrated. That they were still free spoke only to Esthar's desire to have Galbadians remain in charge of their country, if in name only. Caraway's trial was a sop to Dollet and yet these men still breathed free air. Even if they breathed it inside the walls of the palace compound it galled her. _Why do men like this remain free while good people rot away?_

_Because you allowed it, Xu. Because Squall and Laguna told you how it was going to be and you said 'yessir'._

Her eyes swept across them, naming them as she went. Her eyes alighted for milliseconds more on generals Barron and Leland, and she saw the looks in their eyes. Both of them had been leaders of Galbadia's intelligence community. They knew she knew, and their faces were pale.

One of them stood to address her. One of the younger ones. Younger by comparison. "Ms Tyynes. This is an unexpected pleasure."

She swallowed bile as she spoke. "Time was of the essence."

The man smiled. "Anything we can do to aid the reconstruction commission."

She smiled at them and he faltered. They hated her, all of them. She was a mere slip of a girl and they were seasoned old soldiers and yet she dominated them, and they had no choice but to let her. Not one of them didn't have secret dreams of taking the arrogant bitch down, and not one of them dared try. "This is more of a personal visit sir." She reached inside the jacket and placed the burned papers onto the grand table they sat around. "Let's talk, shall we?"

One of them picked it up and shook it like something disagreeable. "What's this?"

She threw the words at them like a gunshot. "Evidence of human experimentation on living subjects by the Galbadian military." There, it was on the table now. Let them decide their own fate. She could feel it running through her like molten steel, the walls of control finally worn down after decades of keeping feelings and emotions and wants penned up behind them. "What do you have to say for yourselves?"

She wasn't surprised, in the end, that it was Barron who stood. A fat man with a fat ego. "This is…this is absolutely preposterous! This _evidence_ of yours can't possibly by anything other than some kind of SeeD-"

"Because here's what I think, general." She cut off him mercilessly. "I think those walls were covered in blood for a reason. I think you were handling something you couldn't control and it almost got away from you." She caught Leland's eyes and his despair shone out of them even as her fury flew into his. "I think you were trying to create a magical army out of kidnapped Deling citizens. I think you almost succeeded." He was sweating now. "_How close am I?"_ she hissed.

If Leland was sweating Barron was looking like to expand and take off from the floor, his face was so red. "This is ridiculous! I won't be dictated to by some Garden _whore!_ You will not-"

It was free of her before she was aware of it. Away from her grasp before anyone at that old wooden table knew what the silver glint was For a moment the tableaux froze in silence as they registered what had just happened, and finally the dull choking gasps as General Barron clawed at his own throat, and the knife buried in it. They just stared at their comrade as their minds flew first to realise that they were seeing what they were, and then finally past the wall that told them _no, this cannot happen to us, we are the rulers of this nation_.

_But it _is_ happening._

"Who knew?"

It felt like the walls around her heart had left her body along with the knife from her hand, she could feel wind whipping inside her as the generals turned from their dying comrade to her and she stood triumphant and untouchable before them, a goddess passing terrible judgement. Barron stumbled from his chair and dragged himself to the door, eyes almost popping from their sockets and blood staining the carpet, but not one of them rose to help as they all stared at her. Their lives were in her hands.

_Is this what you felt, Seifer? _"I will have answers."

It was Leland who rose. "We all knew. Including Caraway. Even if he washed his hands of it, he knew." A hand reached up to pull him back down but he shook off the grasp of his fellow general. "No, I will speak!" He looked back at her and his voice was old and tired. "I should have done this years ago, but I was afraid. If this is our fate so be it, it's no less than we deserve."

She had to clasp her hands together to hide the shaking. "Why?" _Your own people! YOUR OWN PEOPLE!_

The old man shrugged. "What else could we do? Esthar were destroying us. We had no control of magic and their soldiers were…they had things we couldn't dream about. Adel was a monster. We were desperate. Just desperate." He looked into her eyes and she saw his resignation. "I headed the project, along with him." His eyes swept to the body at the foot of the door. It had managed some half-hearted swipes for the handle before it had fallen and ceased movement. "It seemed like our only answer." His gaze misted over, like the memories were taking over from within. "When we found the couple we thought it could be done. Clones or offspring, it didn't matter so long as they had _power_. They went _together_ you see. That's why Adel was the way she was. She didn't have one and it drove her insane. Eyes like the sea. They were so beautiful."

One of the others stared at her, sweat pouring from his brow. "What now?"

She barely heard him. She looked from the body on the floor to the wide-eyed generals still sat around the table and as the red mist rose she could not longer tell the difference.

_No more, Squall._

* * *

><p>He stared at her as she stood there, hands in her pockets. "Hey, where you going at this hour?"<p>

She looked around at him, her gaze torn away from the skyline. Snow had stopped falling days ago it seemed, and Deling was returning to its normal hues of pale gray and browns. "Hmm?"

The man looked at her in annoyance from the door of the mansion. Warm orange and red glow lit him behind and she could see shapes moving back there, and the heat washing across her as it escaped the warm interior into the cold night. "I asked where you were going."

"Just…just out."

"Minutes after you got back? At _this_ hour?"

She clawed for an explanation. "I need some air."

Seifer snorted in amusement. "What, the air in here not good enough? Well, watch yourself. We've had cultist gangs spotted in the district. Still no idea where those guys are hiding. Would hate for you to come back in pieces."

She nodded once. "I…yes. Thank you. Seifer?"

The door halfway closed, he looked back at her. In the night, her dark clothes and black hair, she looked like a ghost hanging on the doorstep of the SeeD HQ. "What?"

"Good luck."

He shrugged. "Sure. Could use a little."

"You deserve some."

"Oh? Has the precious little diamond had a change of heart about her misunderstood underling?"

She stared at him for a moment before replying. She knew the hatred she held in her heart, but somehow right now she couldn't bring any of it out. It had been replaced there. "No. Well. You could say that."

"When are you back? We have patrols in the morning. Now you found that little science experiment we're checking the rest of the old stuff around the city. There's a _lot _of it. Never knew how much till you look at a map."

She thought long and hard, but no answer came. "For a little while." She settled on that.

"Well, later." He closed the door behind him. Seifer Almasy would never see her again.

For a moment she looked at that wooden slab leading inside, and the promises on the other side. A warm home and a group of comrades that cared for her, a job and a mission and a task she had moulded herself into, her rough edges ground away as she had fit herself into their world. She flexed a hand experimentally and felt the slick wetness rub between her fingers. She wouldn't wash the blood off for a while yet. She would carry it with her as a memory for a little while longer, as she finished shedding the bindings of the thing people had called SeeD and became Xu Tyynes. Her father's daughter.

Before doubts could arise and before that old useless shell could try and pull her back to its home, she walked off into the night.

East, towards the sea.


	25. Squall Leonhart

He felt old. Old and tired.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing. I'm sorry commander. We tried to send someone in again but…At least they came back alive this time."

Squall pounded his fist on the desk in frustration and anger. "God _damn_ it!" he stood with effort. He'd stayed on the crutches for all of one day before throwing them off and standing on his own, no matter it felt like his joints were burning whenever he walked across the room. He wanted- no, _needed_ some reminder of her. If this was all she had left him with, so be it. "If only we could get someone inside!"

Months. Mere months since this entire mess had started, not even a particularly long measurement of time, but to Squall they felt like years. When he had been young the days had flown past. When he had been a SeeD they had vanished into the past like lightning as he had trained and trained until his body was steel and his mind tuned into a finely-calibrated machine. Finally the Second War had ended and those months had slipped away from him as he and Rinoa had looked forward to their life together and had walked towards it without fear. Now those forgotten and pushed-aside months had come back and stacked themselves on top of him one after another, and as if in vengeance for his not noticing them before the days crawled past at a snail's pace.

Nothing on Xu except worrying reports of a trail of bodies, congregations visited in the night and the men of the white armbands found dead in alleys. She was blazing a trail of corpses, its path erratic as it deviated to pass through villages and towns touched by the Cultists, leaving them coated in red. Squall knew where was she going, but he knew he had no chance of getting in her way. He knew her well, but she knew him better. She wasn't going to be found.

Letters out of Dollet from Fujin and the others, a clear ray of hope in a confusing fog. Rumours and apocrypha and more from the silent SeeD and her cohorts as they collected as much information as they could and sent it along just as fast. The city belonged to the man Aimsland now, that much was clear. Squall had sighed when he had read Zell's half-embarrassed half-professional summary of his and Nida's little escapade and his reply had been short and to the point. The four of them were the sole sources of information they had from the coastal city and he didn't want them risking themselves. They had two missions and two missions only, and neither involved combat of any sort; find information on anything they could and get that information to the outside. No combat allowed. Squall had written _that_ order himself and made damn sure it was underlined twice. He knew he should have worried about it more. Knew he should be keeping a closer eye on the city, but Rinoa's absence left a hole that seemed to have erased them. He'd woken up from his half-sleep half-coma she had put him in and seen Seifer's eyes and knew without being told what had happened, and as his blonde nemesis had said the words some emotional core had been ripped out. He felt like a machine with half its brain shut down, reduced to simply collating data and recording events and facts as they happened around him.

_Recorded: _Dollet had been taken over by rabid Sorceress Cultists and Quistis Trepe, the nearest thing he had to an older sister and a woman he had fought and bled alongside for years, had been swallowed into a black hole that no information escaped from. Wherever she was now she was in God's hands, if Hyne truly listened to His creations.

_Recorded: _Rinoa, his own wife, had left him behind with a flash of white through his eyes and one final memory of lips against his cheek. He had no idea where she was, or what she was doing.

_Recorded: _Xu Tyynes, the rock on which Balamb Garden anchored itself, had slaughtered the Galbadian generals and vanished into the night. Reports came in of bodies in the streets and towns between Deling and Dollet, the men of the white armbands waking in the morning to find their congregations short by one member as a vengeful geist passed through them and took lives as easily as snuffing a candle. She would not be caught.

The man was still looking at him and he waved him away. "Thanks. That'll be all." The man left soundlessly, and as the door swung open and shut he caught a flash of white from the other side, and a half-whispered conversation.

"…still like a lost puppy…?"

"…not...place to say, sir."

"I'll deal with it."

This last came through loud and clear as the door flew open again and Seifer strode into the room. Caraway had used it as a study and Squall was putting it to much the same use, papers strewn across half the surfaces. The walls were soundproof or nearly so, and he had taken to it just to get away from the bustle of the mansion. He knew that Selphie and Irvine meant well but no matter how hard they tried it seemed he was immune to their enthusiasm. "What now?"

Seifer stared at Squall. It only flicked across his eyes for a second but was it disgust that he'd just seen in the blonde man's eyes. "So you're still here? Why?"

"Where else would I be?" He didn't want to deal with this. The steady attenuation of personnel had withered the original staff of the mansion down and down as people quit or were rotated out and not replaced. More and more it seemed as though Squall and the others were stuck in a mansion with some silent and perfect spirit that swept away his men one by one. Sometimes he'd found himself talking to Seifer solely because there were so few people left in it. But not today. "I'm busy with-"

"You're busy with crap." Calmly and with no change of his expression Seifer swept a hand across the desk Squall sat at, sending papers and ornaments crashing to the ground. "I asked why you were still here. In Deling."

"I have work to do. I-"

Seifer sighed in exasperation. "I swear to God they only make you SeeDs if they know you have issues." He planted his hands on the desk and leaned closer to Squall. "Your wife's out there missing and you're sat here still looking for some kind of answer to all this shit? While you_ wife_ is _missing?"_

Maybe in the past he would have smirked, or something equally childish. It was no secret to anyone what Seifer thought about Rinoa. Stories had been written about it for years. In an earlier time he would have been angry, or maybe pitying, as he saw that small flame flare up again, the one Seifer Almasy seemed to refuse to let go. The last remnant of the man's dream. "The hell do you think I should do? Walk out there and start asking the entire city whether they've seen a woman walking around with wings on her back? I-"

Seifer slapped him.

It wasn't hard, or particularly full of malice, but it shocked him as the man's glove went across his face. He was too surprised to react, or even hit back. He just sat there as Seifer stood up straight, and the look in his eyes was something Squall didn't want to see.

"I lost to _this?_ No wonder she left you behind. She took the best parts with her, didn't even need the rest."

He snapped and stood up, body working on autopilot as all that old anger and hatred boiled back up out of the box he'd forced it into after the War had ended. _It's over, we won, I beat him. She loves me, not you._ But some small part of him had always wondered. "The _hell_ do you want Seifer?"

"What do I _want?_ I _want_ to get out of this godforsaken city and go back to something approaching a normal life. Loire offered me a line out of this mess and I'll be damned if you screw it up for me." He tossed down something and it made a _ping_ against the desk. Squall picked it up and examined it, the metal catching the light as it did so. It was a Cultist pendant, a crude circle of beaten copper with a rough approximation of a pair of wings inside it. Seifer went on. "We got this from one of the bases Irvine was looking through after Xu's little lab of horrors. He found it today. The man wearing it told us some pretty interesting things when we caught him." Squall remembered something someone had told him, what seemed like an age ago:

_...congregation retreated into the tunnels under Galbadia. We-_

Seifer leaned back down again and there was fire in his eyes. "I want you to wake up from your little pity party and come with me and the damned cowboy, when we go set their little hidey-hole on fire and see what scuttles out." He turned to leave, only pausing at the door. "She wouldn't want this Squall, and we both know it."

Squall stared at the closed door, fingers idly tracing the shape of the cultist pendant. Finally he came to a decision and stood. The case still stood against the wall and as he unsnapped the latches he shook his head at what the other man had told him. He was worried that there was nothing he could do, that she didn't need him. If she had asked he would have left the city with her and she knew it. Why did she leave him behind then? There would always be a part of Rinoa's soul that would be beyond him, even as her Knight. He had glimpsed it in Ultimecia's castle during the war, and he has seen it only a few times since then. The sheer power and enjoyment of the Sorceress within her. Not his angel, but _theirs._ He was worried that he would go and find her and she would look at him and simply say _I don't need you to complete me anymore_. It was selfish and petty but he knew it was there. Suddenly Squall looked and saw himself as Seifer must have done.

_So be it. Doesn't matter if I'll be her knight or her servant. At least we'll be together._

He swung the door open that led outside to the car, to find someone already there waiting for him.

Seifer grinned. "Don't you hate it when I'm right?"

"Shut up."

* * *

><p>It really was a hole. In another age it might have been used as an escape route should Deling ever be threatened with invasion, or to store supplies in case of bombardment. Now it was used as a HQ for fanatics. Squall shone his torch down and the beam only made it a few dozen yards before it was swallowed, and black nothing stared back at him. They'd pushed their way through an empty warehouse to find it, old machinery and other discarded material hiding it well enough for the casual inspector to turn away in disgust, but if you already knew it was there you could see the places where junk had been piled <em>just so<em> to form a path through the squat building, to the trapdoor in the ground, and the painted symbol on the wall.

Irvine snorted in amusement as he and Selphie stared down. Both of them were filthy from just finding the place. "First labs now this? What else is buried here?"

Seifer shrugged. "Deling's like a sewer, all the shit flows underground eventually." He checked his watch. "According to our little friend-" Squall had met the friend. He had been a scared young man utterly intimidated by Seifer's anger, and had given up without a struggle, "-we have a few hours before they wonder where he is, so I suggest we get to work."

Squall shifted the dagger on his belt. There was no way he'd be able to swing the Lionheart within the confines of those tunnels. Unlike his own blade there was nothing pristine about it; it was crude and sharp. It would do. Before he could find a reason not to he walked past Seifer and descended down into the darkness.

It was nothing like he had expected. He brushed a hand across the wall and it came away free of dust or anything else. A few steps in and the ground below him solidified from loose dirt into a hard-packed well-worn path, and eventually he realised that there was no reason to stoop, because the ceiling was high enough to stand.

_They're well-organised enough to get this done?_ This wasn't just some cultist bolt-hole. He heard Seifer whistle behind him as the man realised the same thing, and the two shared a look before travelling further in. The floor sloped gently and he could feel the pressure above him increase as they went deeper into Deling's underside. Squall played his torch from side to side and for a moment didn't realise what he was seeing, until Seifer spoke up in a hushed whisper as his own light moved over the same carved brick that had been roughly shoved and hammered into the dirt wall.

"These people don't fuck around," Seifer said with faint admiration, as the word _Sleeping Quarters_ carved into the brick was lit up. "What do you think?

_Do they have a complex down here, entirely in the dark? How do these people _live_? I'd go insane from a day of this and they have enough traffic to put up goddamn signposts?_

"Who's there?"

At the same moment the voice came out of the darkness ahead of them, some instinctual telepathy flew between Squall and Seifer as without speaking they both switched off their torches at the same moment. They were plunged into darkness and for a moment all Squall could hear was the blood roaring through his ears. Luckily for his own sanity the silence didn't press upon them for long, as down the tunnel a beam of light rounded a corner and bobbed towards them. Squall felt wind moving past his shoulder and was too late to stop Seifer, as for a moment a black outline occluded the light of the new arrival. There was a cut-off choking gasp and the light swung wildly from one side to another, and finally a foot came crashing down on it, and the only sound was Seifer's voice.

"Don't try and speak or cry out or I'll cut your throat. Understand me?" There must have been some nod in the darkness because Seifer went on. "We want information, and we're looking for someone informed. Right now that's you. Unless you give me someone higher up your little cultist chain of command, you're _it._ Do you understand?" For his own part Squall must have been utterly convinced. The man must have been too, because Seifer reacted to something Squall couldn't see. "Good. Thank you for your cooperation. This won't hurt. Much." A dull thump, and then there was nothing.

Squall risked turning his flashlight back to, and found Seifer dusting off his hands. ON the ground lay the unfortunate victim of his questioning. He held the beam on the man for a moment, enough to make sure he was still breathing. "Did you really need to-"

"Yes," Seifer cut him off. He tipped his head and Squall heard the same thing he did; the sound of footsteps echoing across a narrow space. "Shit." He turned back to look him in the eye. "This is the best shot we have at finding where Rinoa went. God knows I could think of a thousand better places to be than down a hole with your insecure ass but we need to get this done while we can. Are you with me?" Before Squall could say anything more the other man had already disappeared into the shadows.

With little choice, he followed him down.

* * *

><p>The hours went past in a blur of half-remembered attacks and flashes as they fought and sneaked their way through what seemed like miles of tunnels and rooms. They'd push through dirt for minutes and then step out of a gap in the wall into a well-lit room that could have been from any cheap barracks on the surface. He tried to keep some sort of map in his head but it quickly fell apart, and as best either of them could tell they were blazing a path across half the city. The tunnels must have been dug between basements and storage-rooms already in the city, forgotten by anyone else. By the time they had gone half a mile – or maybe more – they knew that people were already alerted and hunting for them. Squall only hoped Selphie and Irvine had managed to get something in place on the surface already.<p>

The man struck out with the makeshift weapon, a simple knife duct-taped to a broomstick, and he grabbed the wooden handle as it went past and pulled, his elbow already coming up as the man lost his balance and careened towards him. Bone met bone and he dropped like a light. Squall winced as his joints protested at their rough treatment, but he was already moving out of the dirt and into the light of the next identical square box of their trip.

"God, that was a long one." Seifer spat blood, the result of an unlucky (or lucky, depending on your point of view) strike from a man who had been a little quicker than his fellows. He'd paid for his hit though, laid out somewhere in the tunnels alongside the others. "We _must_ be getting closer."

Seifer's interrogation technique was crude but unreliably effective. Whatever backbone the cultists had melted swiftly under it, and names had given up other names until finally they had come to the end of the human information chain. The man had been half-terrified out of his skull, and covered in dirt from where he had been trying to tunnel through the walls to get away from them. Seifer had grabbed him by the collar and thrown him down, but it had been Squall that had recognised him.

_You!_

_You know this guy?_ Seifer had asked, when the man had collapsed to Squall's knee and begged.

The man who had approached them in Dollet looked up into the two faces of the SeeD and his ally and seen no pity there. The poise and smug arrogance were gone now, replaced by abject terror. Not so confident now, that he didn't have the upper hand. Squall had felt rage course through his veins and one hand was already on his knife when Seifer had roughly pushed him away, kneeling down to look into the man's face.

_Seems you have a little history with my friend here. You answer my questions and maybe I won't leave you alone here with him. _

He had nodded pathetically and spilled his guts. _She…the archangel was here_. Squall's stomach lurched at the thought of Rinoa down in this maze of darkness._ She came to us, I took…we took her down here and showed her how we worshipped her…her kind. She…she wanted to meet the other cultists, and she was only here for a few hours I swear to the Archangel I'm not lying! She asked some questions about the Faithful and then she left us. I_ _swear to Her I don't know where she went! Some people left with us, they went…I forget! I swear to Hyne I'm not lying!_

_And all these gun you're hiding down here? Are those for the rats?_

_We…we were going to drive you…drive SeeD out of the city. Make it holy again like Dollet, for when She returned to us. We need to cleanse…cleanse the world of evil for the Resurrection._

Seifer spoke a word at a time. _Where. Did. She. Go._

_She went east! That's all I know! THAT'S ALL I KNOW!_

Seifer tried to get a more exact destination out of him but either the man didn't know or there was some fear inside him that overruled the immediate threat of a slit throat. Seifer turned and looked at Squall. His hand wasn't at his blade anymore but his fury was obvious. _He isn't lying. What do you want me to do with him?_

_Leave him down here, _he'd spat back_. He's no one._

There was light ahead, finally, and Seifer almost sighed as they walked towards it. Squall lagged behind a little, trying to find his feet, his head heavy with what the man had told him. _What are you doing Rin?_ He could hear voices ahead and he was lifted bodily up into light and noise from the darkness of underground. Squall shielded his eyes from the glare of searchlights as Irvine and Selphie hauled him out of the pit.

"You really know how to start a party."

He stared around him. Seifer was shouting something to someone in a military uniform, and the entire area was lit up. He could hear fireworks going off somewhere in the distance and it took him a second to realise that that wasn't what they were. He looked at Irvine and opened his mouth to ask _what the hell is going on_ but the other man was already talking.

"About two hours after you went down there we got people just hauling ass out of nowhere and trying to take down patrols all over the city." He nodded at Squall's expression of disbelief. "Yeah, exactly. Just groups of guys bringing out guns and trying to take over buildings around the place. Checkpoints too."

"Cultists." He blinked. "They tried to take the city?"

Irvine nodded again. "They did a crappy job though. Doing." You could still hear the distant pop of gunfire. "Whatever plan they had you sure threw a wrench into it. If they had a timetable I'd say you and that ass over there managed to hit it until it broke. They just attacked whatever was closest." He clapped Squall hard on the shoulder, ignoring the wince this caused. "Good job man."

Seifer walked back over, and the grin on his face was full of satisfaction. "I guess they thought all of SeeD was coming down on them and decided it was now or never. Well, it's never. "

Squall brushed himself down and stood. He had the vague idea that as Commander he should have been giving orders, but the speed f events had overtaken him, and all he wanted was to get his head down and sleep the dust away. He took a deep breath. It wasn't much but he'd take what he could get. "Anything major?"

"Nope!" Selphie grinned. "Like whack-a-mole."

He looked around himself, at the crumbling city around him, the ruins that had been left behind by the people that had commanded it. Generations of politicians and soldiers had came and went and kept it much the same. Edea had ruled it for months but even her influence hadn't been able to transform the city. Fujin and Raijin had done their best to re-build without changing. Xu had cut a swath through the head of the city like an executioner, but even then the body kept moving. There was something about Deling City which refused to change. It was pig-iron, and would break before it bent. He made his decision then. "We're going home."

Irvine sighed contentedly. "Good, it's bloody cold out here. Can we-"

Squall shook his head. "No, not to the mansion." He took a deep breath. "Almasy, call the Reconstruction management together and tell them what they need to know to keep the city running. Irvine, Selphie. Your job's done, with these guys-" he jerked a finger at the unconscious cultists behind him, "-out of commission it's as safe as we'll ever make it. I'm sure what's left of the army will want their city back. Irvine, make sure we're not leaving anything behind. Selphie, before you strip it down call Esthar and get them to send the Ragnarok over."

The woman's eyes lit up like flares. "Seriously."

Squall nodded and turned to the three. He'd have preferred two, but everything he had learned was telling him not to waste such a precious resource, and that part of him was overriding his complaining inner child. "We're going back to Balamb Garden as soon as humanely possible." The next words came unbidden, but as soon as he said them he knew they would be the truth.

"You're going home."

Irvine and Selphie hugged, either at the thought of going back to Balamb or just at the thought of leaving Deling. Seifer stood with his arms crossed, the expression on his face trying to remain totally neutral while holding down it's disbelief that he was included. Squall made a mental note to get Irvine – or Selphie, more likely – to smooth it over with the others. Best too that Seifer's arrival at his old school went as announced as possible. Between all of the orders they would have their work cut out of them. They'd have the time it took for the Ragnarok to be fuelled and crossing the ocean to be ready. Two days maybe.

By then he would be long gone.


	26. Leonard Nerva

"There's been a change of plans, I need to move up the schedule. Are your men ready? Those not chasing ghosts."

Leonard Nerva hated Morden Aimsland. He hated that icy shell that refused to be cracked or broken no matter how much shit was thrown at him. He hated the envious looks he got from women in the street as they passed. He hated the easy confidence that he seemed to throw off and only he could see through. He hated the admiration and adoration he received whenever he walked down the corridors of the palace. He hated the trust others showed in him even as he himself had to threaten and cajole those same people into following their orders. He hated everything about the man.

Leonard Nerva _hated _Morden Aimsland.

_How the hell did he find out?_

As usual the arrogant son of a bitch seemed to have some way of reading his mind. "I learned it only a few hours ago, from one of your people. I assume you were going to tell me when you arrived, but instead you bring me _this?_"

_This _ was a picture that Nerva had received from one of his people, out on the plains. A picture of a hooded figure standing in the middle of a crowded square, just one more well-wrapped citizen from any of the dozen villages skirting the edges of Dollet's territory. He'd given this one special attention though, and told his men exactly what to look for. The pose had given her away, even as her unremarkable figure concealed it all. Hands clasped together in front of her, legs together as if she were at attention. She must have known she was being photographed, because he had been given by the picture not by the person who had found the body, but by the person who had found _his._ "Tyynes is just one woman. We'll get her eventually."

Aimsland placed the photograph down on the table. He wasn't a man that slammed his fists or shouted (he used _him_ for that, Nerva thought) but his anger was palpable. "So far 'eventually has taken two weeks and ten of our ministers, and she's getting closer to our city. If-"

Nerva hated that he had to stand and listen as he talked, hated having to take orders from this quiet prancing weakling. It was galling. He would have done it all differently. Burned Dollet to the ground and marched on Deling. Disposed of that frigid SeeD whore and torn out the ones still hidden somewhere in the city.

"-not even what I was talking about, as you well know?"

Nerva froze. _Shit._

Aimsland nodded as he read the expression on his subordinate's face. "The entire cell dissolved and broken down in a single night." He tapped his fingers on the table and to Nerva's ears it sounded like some eerie countdown. "All of the Faithful locked up or dead. And when were you going to tell me about this, Leonard?" His voice was like a snake in the grass, or a hissing tiger. "You seem to be keeping things very close to your chest these days."

His breath was shallow in his throat as he stared into those blue eyes and he had to concentrate hard to avoid panting for air in the room, as Aimsland stared him down. That gentle force seemed to be exerting some mental pressure and he felt like he would be pushed back by it, into the abyss just behind his feet. If he stepped back he would fall in and be lost, all the plans he'd made crushed to ruin and scattered to the winds. He had needed more time. After Deling would have fallen – to _his_ men, not Aimsland's fawning cult – he could have finished off the man and taken both cities for the prize. Let the brat rule in his name while he cleaned up Deling's last remnants of leadership and chased the SeeDs back to their ocean hideaway.

But then that bitch Tyynes had beaten him to it, slaughtering the old men in cold blood, and suddenly he'd woken one morning to an insistent knock at the door and found failure had reached out during the night and slammed a fist down onto his trump card. The tunnels under Deling were empty again now and not because his men had come out of the ground and taken the city in the night. Some fucking disaster had clawed its way down there and forced his men up out of the basements one by one, to be dealt with by the SeeDs waiting for them. He could put a name to that disaster.

"The SeeDs got lucky, that's all. We still hold the city. The situation isn't so bad that-" _Fuck! Shut up!_ He stopped talking but the damage had already been done, and Aimsland's eyes stared at him like blue daggers.

"The city's _gone_ Nerva. It's not going to be ours anymore, we no longer have the men to take it. Even that weak cipher Leonhart would make sure it was clean before he moved out. There's nothing there now."

"Leonhart's gone?"

The smile was back. Whenever he looked at it the room seemed to swim in front of his eyes. "The SeeDs are packing up. They're leaving Deling. Not that they need to stay, since our soldiers ware now dead or in prison. Did your _men_ manage to inform you of this?"He stood and leaned forward, all menace as shadows fell across his face, and still those blue eyes glared into his own. "Do you remember the deal that we struck, the pact we made Leonard? I'm keeping my end of the bargain. I wish you'd keep yours." Aimsland sat back down at the desk, his interest in the other man seeming to fade instantly. "That will be all."

Not _thank you for your time _or _until later_ now. Just a curt dismissal. Nerva turned and shoved the door closed, the echoing slam giving him no satisfaction. He could feel pinpricks biting into his hands and looked down to see they had made fists all of their own, biting through the leather of his gloves and drawing blood. He heard a whisper of cloth on marble and looked up just in time to see Kettil sweep past him and enter the door. The cultists guarding the entrance didn't even blink as the man pushed open the door and went inside, whereas _he_ had been held back and forced to announce himself.

He walked away from the door, before he did something he knew he'd regret. He needed something to take his anger out on. Something he could ruin and bend and break until the fury in his bones leeched out into it and he felt like he could hold a conversation without screaming, without looking into the eyes of another person and wondering what they thought of him. He needed something he could hurt.

Or someone.

* * *

><p>" <em>Life isn't fair, is it."<em>

"_You're goddamn right." He was slurring his words and knew it, but fuck if he gave a damn anymore._

_The man slid the drink over and Nerva accepted it gratefully. "You sound like you need it more than me. Want to talk about it?"_

_Nerva shrugged. It's not like things could get any worse for him. Stuck in this damned seaside shithole with no payment, a terrible job, a huge slur on his reputation and dragging around some half-dead waif. God, what a horrible job that had been. He'd pulled what strings he had left, called in the last favours he had, and knew he'd been damn lucky to even get this gig. If some royalist asshole overheard and decided to inform, so what. He'd just move on again.__ The man next to him didn't look like much, just one more asshole in a town full of them. Weird eyes though. "You wouldn't get it."_

"_I've been a soldier. You'd be surprised." The man's eyes narrowed for a moment, and was it his imagination or did the temperature drop just a few degrees? "Yes. Surprised."_

_He coughed to clear out his throat. "A job gone wrong. Not my fault you understand-" it had been "-but the damn Galbadians always need someone to blame." The other man nodded. Cheered by the stranger's sympathy, he went on. "We were supposed to be clearing some old labs out for the brass over there. It was real quiet stuff. Pay was supposed to set up my team for life." A 'team' he'd hired from the street the day before and were dead before they had even finished. No sense sharing out the cash too many ways._

"_That ended up not being so quiet?"_

"_Got that right." _

_They had been crazy. Clawing at the bars to get out, and then finally just clawing when they realised what was to happen to them. The man had said it would be a simple clean-up, no witnesses no fuss, but he had vanished like a shot when the first handcuff had broken and the prisoner/specimen/whatever had fallen onto Nerva's colleague like a madman, ripping and tearing at clothes and flesh. He couldn't remember most of the next twenty minutes. There had been screaming and shooting and eyes like diamonds glittering in the dark. Finally he'd come around to his senses and found himself surrounded by dozens of bodies, and nobody left alive besides himself and Almas, still as voiceless and emotionless in the middle of that carnage as if she was looking out of a window. He'd left town the next day and he hadn't looked back. He'd left everything behind in Deling, including the advance they'd given him. He'd considered sending Almas back for it but doubted even she would get in and out without setting off any alarms in that heavily-guarded city. Fuck it. He'd sent her away to scout through Dollet for employment opportunities and see what the lay of the land was like, while he found the neared bar and took away the memories with a little liquid amnesia. She'd done this task with the same detachment she did everything he asked of her. Whatever had turned her into this order-taking emotionless doll he raised a glass to their memory, because god damn it was convenient having her around. He'd been there in the bar for a good couple of hours and three sheets to the wind when the other man had walked in and started talking with him._

"_Sounds like you've been in some trouble."_

"_You have no idea."_

_He leaned forward. "I have a proposition for you."_

_Nerva resisted the urge to sneer. Guarding the royal brats was quiet and safe and paid well, but it galled him to have to clean up after the little bastards. Like they were better than he was. It reminded him too much of that bitch back at Balamb. "Oh?"_

"_I have a small but growing interest in a group of people much like yourself. People cut down before they could achieve true greatness. I've been looking for someone to help lead them."_

"_And what are you offering in return?"_

_The man smiled. "How about this city, for a start?"_

_He did laugh then. The stranger didn't look hurt, or even surprised. He just kept on smiling. "Right, okay. You're going to take Dollet away from those spoiled rich kids and give it to me."_

"_Yes."_

_He sobered up as he realised the stranger was serious. "Is this some kind of joke?"_

"_No."_

_Nerva blinked and felt the ghost of a smile cross his face. "You want to take over a city huh?"_

"_Absolutely."_

_He snorted. "Well it's an interesting offer mister…"_

"_Aimsland. Morden Aimsland. Let me tell you what I have planned."_

_So he'd listened. That had been his first mistake.  
><em>

* * *

><p>If he could have gone back in time and slammed his past self's head onto the desk and shouted <em>don't be a fucking idiot <em>at himself he would have. It had taken Aimsland a day but eventually Nerva had believed the confident blue-eyed man when he said he could take over the city. He'd fell for Aimsland's pitch and now he couldn't see a way out, except for… "You, get over here!"

Almas turned with the closest thing she had to surprise as she heard his voice. If he hadn't known better he would have said she flinched. She stood there like a deer in headlights as he walked over to her and he stared down at the girl with frustration. She was just so…empty. Like whatever hole he'd picked her up from had grabbed a part of her as they left, and now there was just some woman-shaped shell. Not as empty as she had been, though. When they had met she had been a blank slate, something he could imprint training and orders onto and she would learn and follow. That had changed since this whole mess had kicked off. An did she look just a little more…colourful…than she had? A little more black in that hair and a little more peach in that skin? Suddenly he felt dry but shrugged off the creeping feeling it brought with it. He could use a drink, nothing more.

"What were you doing down there?

She just stared dumbly at him and he glanced sideways. He knew damn well where she had been. Down in the dungeon with that SeeD bitch again and Aimsland stood outside the door doing god knows what. At first he'd thought it was a sex thing, but he'd shoved that away. As much as the thought of Trepe being forced onto the the gray little nobody made him laugh he doubted that Aimsland was the kind of tyrant who got off on voyeurism. He was pretty sure he wasn't saving the woman for himself either. The last time Nerva had been allowed – _had bothered – _to go down to the cell they'd shoved the GF-thing into her skull somehow and left her there. Not even discussion of a ransom. If Aimsland had any plans for her he was keeping quiet. _Not like he'd bothered to tell me anything._ Almas was still staring at him with those eyes. "I said _what were you doing down there!"_

His hand was out before he realised it, and her head flew to the side as the slap connected. For a moment the two stood there motionless, before Almas turned back to stare at him. They stood there in the corridor, the two semi-soldiers. One twisted and arrogant and the other something else entirely. Finally Nerva broke the silence. Sometimes he wondered whether the girl spoke at all. She did what he told him and when he'd tried to teach her- _may as well get some use out of the brainwashed bitch – _she'd absorbed it like a sponge. Working for the duchess had been dull and not a little humiliating, but they had been excellent at it. Eventually even the other guards had noticed, and they'd been given the bodyguard spot without a problem. Witht the pair just waiting for the order to bury a knife in the duchess's back Aimsland's plan had been certain, and Nerva had been sure of his reward at the end of it. Now though- "Just get out of here." Almas turned to walk away when the voice came from behind him, and he heard his own words repeated back to him.

"What are you doing?"

Nerva spun at the sound of that goddamn voice to see Aimsland standing there. "What?"

The cult leader looked at Nerva like he'd just smelled something bad. "It isn't polite to hit a lady."

He snorted. "She hasn't been a lady for a while. What I do with her is none of your god damn business."

At those words Aimsland's eyes lit up like twin searchlights, and Nerva flinched just a little bit, as he realised he might have made a mistake. He scanned the room but saw no other guards come into the stone chamber. Just him and the little prophet.

"But it _is_ my business. Almas?"

Nerva turned to see that Almas hadn't walked out of the room like he had told her to, had stopped moving when Aimsland had walked in on them. The three stood in a triangle in the room. Nerva felt his breath going short when he saw she was staring not at him, but past him at the other man. "Didn't I tell you to get out of here?"

Aimsland just held out a hand. "Almas, come to me."

Ice shot through Nerva's veins and he had to physically prevent himself from shivering. Trying to sound as calm as he could he opened his mouth again as Almas turned away from him and began to walk to the other man. "Don't. You stay right where you are."

There was only a moment of hesitation, one single moment when Nerva thought he might have retained some advantage or grasp over whatever it was Aimsland was looking for in the city. Then Almas calmly and without a sound walked over to the cultist leader, and took his hand. Their eyes met for a second, then the blue orbs of Aimsland's eyes broke away from her gray ones and stared directly across the room at him, and Nerva realised what had just happened.

_He wanted her loyalty._

_He doesn't need me anymore._

"_You son of a BITCH!"_

His hand spun behind his back as fast as he could for the pistol he carried around with him everywhere, but somehow, _somehow_ the other man was already on him. Aimsland closed the gap faster than Nerva had ever seen anyone move, and a fist slammed into his midriff so hard he heard something break underneath. He finally got a grip around the weapon and he whipped the gun out and around point-blank at the man's head, but suddenly his hand was dragged aside and Nerva saw the thin chain wrapped around it, and Almas' dull gray eyes staring into his as she locked him down.

"You were a stupid man." Aimsland's eyes burned like blue fire and the smile had been replaced with a snarl. Nerva looked for a moment in wonder at the side of the cool collected man he had never seen before, and then Aimsland's free hand came around, something thin clutched between middle and ring fingers. "You've outlived your usefulness. You're not worthy to see the revival of the Archangel. You are debased and arrogant and your soul is a rag of filth, and you are wretched in Her eyes."

The knifehand came around, and for Leonard Nerva all light vanished.

* * *

><p>She stared down at the body and frowned as she wondered what she was supposed to think. She had seen other scenes like this with dead things sprawled at her feet. Sometimes there had been men or women crying over the body, or sometimes angry screaming people that had tried to reach her and had been cut down to lay with their friendslovers/husbands/wives. Sometimes they had collapsed to the ground in shock and just sat there. Eventually she had wandered away, and they hadn't followed. Almas Jordin stared down at the broken corpse of Leonard Nerva and wondered how to feel.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked around to see Aimsland. She liked Aimsland. Or at least she thought she did. She could feel some sort of vibration inside her chest whenever she looked at the other man, and he seemed just a little less gray than the other bodies that came and went from her vision. Some faint splash of colour. She hadn't known what colour was until recently.

"It was right to do this. He would have hurt her eventually. We both know it."

That brought a flash of anger through her, and she looked down again at the body and felt her hands clench and unclench as they looked for something to do. Leonard's eyes stared back up at hers, unseeing. His expression matched her own. She hadn't liked or disliked him. He had taken her from that dark place and showed her how to move her hands and fists to hurt and kill others, so she supposed by the things she had read about she should be grateful. Somehow she couldn't bring it upon herself. When Aimsland and his splash of colour had asked her to come here tonight she had thought _okay,_ and when he had asked her to come to him she had thought _okay_, and now here was another body at her feet, like all the others. He wasn't important.

_She _was important. She looked into Aimsland's eyes and he smiled back at her. "Of course you can."

She walked away as fast as she could. Back to the dungeons beneath, away from all he confusion and uncertainty of other people and trying to be more like them. She went back down to her knight.

* * *

><p>The words had come unbidden from her mind the first time she'd seen her, and Almas <em>knew<em> that the other woman had heard them. Just looking at her the world had seemed a little less gray, a little less cold. From the first time she had seen her coming off the ship all those weeks ago she had had to try hard to stop from staring. She seemed to emit light and colour like a paper lantern, and whenever Almas looked away from her the land turned gray again. In the days that had passed she had ached to be near her, just to keep her in sight. Even when the sound and fury had happened in the city and she had been kept here while her friends left Almas still hadn't dared stay too close. She knew that Nerva was often watching, Morden had told her that he was. She had taken what looks she could when she had been able to hide it as something else, and had drank in every glance.

After the sound and hard noise that had turned the old woman and her small children into more corpses it had been a paradise, as she had went down to the white squared room and finally touched her, finally held her close. It had felt like pure warmth running through her, like she was finally connected to the source that so many other humans seemed to have but had been denied to her.

The door slid open soundlessly and locked behind her the same way as always, the guards at the entrance not so much as looking around. They knew her face, and they knew she was under _his_ instructions. They were loyal, and they didn't ask questions.

She lay there on the hard floor, curled around herself like an embryo. At first Almas had just stood back and watched when she had found her like this, but finally she realised that the other woman wasn't going to wake up or move. Hesitantly, stopping every other step and hardly breathing she walked over to her and carefully, as quietly as she dared, laid down beside her so close their heads almost touched. Almas could look and see the eyes of the other woman, those blue eyes staring into infinity. She felt around until their hands met and intertwined them, feeling the warmth there. She could feel her heartbeat, and after a second of wondering _will it will it will it happen_ she felt it. Like a pulsing energy that flowed through the other woman realising she was there and jumping the thin space between their bodies into her own. She-

_AGGRESSION! INTRUDER!_

She flinched and resisted the urge to reel away as the creature inside reared up and tried to drive Almas away. She focused on the hatred of the thing, pushing it back into the small part of the woman's mind it came from. The screams of rage and pain subsidized gently into nothing, replaced with only their breathing. She had been afraid at first but eventually she had realised the thing couldn't do anything to hurt her if she kept it inside that small home it seemed to have made. She pushed past the beast and down towards the blue warmth. She loved that light. Loved it like she had never loved or felt for anything else in the world. At first when the woman had been stronger or the drugs hadn't fully taken hold she had tried to fight her off, but Almas had always won out in the end. The struggles had grown fainter as time passed by, and now weeks later there was no longer a resistance, and she drank from the power and found stability there. A blue light that came into her and wrapped around something cool and white inside her and helped it grow.

Sighing contentedly, Almas Jordin sucked up the Blue magic from the soul of the other woman, her own meager power feeding on it like a starving child, growing as it did so. She drank deep from that well, as beside her the mind of the captive SeeD was teased apart piece by piece, devoured by the GF that was desperately trying to stay alive and the grayish-white force that was growing in the girl by her side.

_Soon now._


	27. Nobody

She stared at the colours that swirled around her and tried to think. Not to think _about_ anything. Merely to think. Her mind felt like fog and as she tried to grasp onto the shape of something concrete it slipped through her fingers and fell back into the white nothing that encompassed her, formed the walls of her cell. Words and faces and names floated just out of sight like ghosts, and even as she watched they drifted farther away, out beyond the walls into the fog where no amount of clawing would bring them back. They drifted away.

Closer to _her._

At first it had been manageable (she vaguely recalled). Like a fortress by the edge of the ocean with a pounding and ceaseless sea beneath. She had shored up her memories and thoughts against it like sandbags. But she was one person and the sea was relentless, and no help came from outside. Eventually the waters had taken more and more of the castle and she had been forced to fall farther and farther back towards her sanctuary as the rest of her was drowned. Sometimes there was another force, a gray shape from the air that took even more from her, and she dreaded it even more then she dreaded the cold sea. Now she sat inside the sole room that remained, a white nothingness that extended both to infinity and barely to the tips of her fingers. She could hear the pounding of the waves against those imaginary walls. Once she had known the sea, given it a name. She even thought she might have known why it was doing it, trying to get in at her. Now all she knew was that it couldn't be allowed into what remained of her mind. Not ever. In the room in her mind she could look through the scraps of memory she had and read the things there, all she had went.

_Quistis. Your name is Quistis Trepe. You are a SeeD._

She had left behind everything she dared outside the walls, left them to the ravenous beast that took her memories and devoured them piece by piece to sustain itself. Now all she had were the thin scraps. Some larger ones remained to her, her most precious things, and she hoarded them like gold. Until it got even worse, and she was forced to throw out even her language, she would read them endlessly, to take herself away from herself.

* * *

><p>"<em>I won't let you down sir."<em>

_Cid smiled at her beatifically, like the father she had never had. "I know you won't Ms Trepe."_

_She could feel the weight of the medallion on her chest as she walked from the office, and everything else it represented on her shoulders. She wore it easily. She knew that she should have been scared or terrified like the other candidates had been, but somehow she'd only been able to feel contentment and a sense of…inevitability. She had always known she would pass, ever since the end of the field exam. People had looked at her differently after that. _How could someone so young be so brilliant, so insightful and talented?

By throwing your entire being into the work without a moments rest or doubt, _she hadn't said. Let them think she was naturally this way. Not that it came at the expense of endless sleepless nights, or that at one point during the written exams she had come so close to tearing her on hair out she had needed a midnight visit to the infirmary for the doctor to put a small bottle into her shaking hands. Not that the last remnants of her social life had pretty much died of neglect months ago. Almost died._

"_Well well, here approacheth a SeeD. I wonder if she knows where a certain candidate went."_

_Quistis flipped the badge towards her and Xu caught it easily. "She's dead and gone."_

_Xu held it up to the light and Quistis felt a momentary stab of worry, as if somehow the other girl could take it away for good. A ludicrous thought. Finally the raven-haired cadet passed it back and smiled at her best friend. "Congratulations Quistis. You deserve it."_

_She sighed and it seemed as if all the stress went out of her body, so suddenly she needed to sit down on the bench they passed, as in front of her other Garden staff and students walked through the central concourse. "Hyne thank Him that's over with." Two months of hell, finishing with a practical mission that had gone more wrong than right. She'd done her best and it had been a spectacular performance, taking over from the incapacitated SeeD team-leader and pulling the extraction off even as gunshots had peppered their landing craft as they had left the shore. It had been touch and go, far closer than she'd been prepared to admit to her best friend._

"_So now what happens?"_

"_Now I sleep for a million years." She carefully pinned the badge back in place and surreptitiously looked around. Even just its presence there on her uniform seemed to draw glances. She had never been a shrinking violet but she felt just that little bit taller now it was there._

"_Well you're welcome to the dorm. I have plans for-" Xu stopped talking as she realised what she was saying, and for the first time in a long time Quistis found herself in an awkward silence. SeeDs didn't even share a floor with the cadets. They lived on the level above, symbolism even the dumbest freshman couldn't miss. Xu found her voice first in the extending quiet between them. "Oh, yeah."_

_She tried a smile."Hey, I'll arrange for one over yours. Then you can hear me stomping around upstairs and you can shove your dagger through my floor. Not like you use it for anything else." Even she knew it sounded forced._

"_Like nothing ever changed." Xu looked at her friend as the two sat there, an island of small calm as beyond them Garden's business rushed on. "You really did deserve it." She stood. "Gotta go. You know how Kayes hates it when we're late."_

"_Maybe he wouldn't hate you so much if you called him 'instructor' like you're supposed to." This time the smile wasn't forced a bit. "I'll be meeting you coming out of the Head's office soon?"_

_Xu waved over her shoulder as she walked away. "Depend on it!"_

* * *

><p>It was there again, hovering at the edge of her perceptions. A gray formless shape that descended over her and reduced her inner vision to nothing. At times like this it was all she could do to hold onto what few written words and she could and repeat them from a mantra, as the thing fed. She only counted herself fortunate enough that the thing didn't seem to be interested in her, but the other thing within her.<p>

If the metaphor for her self and mind was a castle under siege by the ocean, then the thing inside her was like a power source buried deep, deep within the foundations. Sometimes when the hungry gray ghost departed she risked a glance down into those deeps, like taking off a steel plate and staring down a shaft into the bowls of the earth. At the bottom she could make it out; what the thing desired. A deep light that pulsed within her. Once what seemed like aeons ago she had tried to reach for it, thinking that she might be able to use it to shore up her defences from the sea. The heat from whatever it was had battered against her and she had to strain to put the cover back on before she was consumed by it. Let the invader take it away if it wanted.

She had known what it was once, she was pretty sure. There were books on the shelves of her memory that had pages, whole sections torn out. The knowledge within was lost but not to the ravenous sea. She knew she herself had done it, back in some distant past. All that remained now was a hollowed-out shell bearing the legend;

_BLUE_

Whatever it was, it was no good to her now. She ran a finger idly along the shelves. Huge reams of empty space now where she had thrown them down into the ocean to keep it satisfied. The library she had once had was now a few slim volumes. Name rank and serial number, and the few things she so desperately wanted to keep she would hold them to her chest even as the ocean reached in and tried to pry them away from her. If this was to be her fate so be it, but she would go out with those warm memories pressed against her, instead of exchanging her soul for just a few more moments.

_Quistis. Your name is Quistis Trepe. You are a…_

_You are...  
><em>

_What am I?_

* * *

><p>"<em>So, that's the end of the whole mess. Good riddance."<em>

"_Good riddance!"_

_Their glasses came together with the musical chimes of crystal knocking crystal, as they toasting themselves. The party had been done for a while now. Cid had opened up the Garden's stocks and the SeeDs had made a heroic effort to drink their way through it, and the students had taken up the challenge and outdone even them. Now the faculty picked through the remains, and the huge ballroom of Balamb Garden was quiet once more, with only one corner of the space still lit by the candles there. That was where they were sitting. From the windows they could see clear across the ocean, the moon as high and bright as any of them could ever remember seeing it. The eight sat around the table, glasses and the remains of the meal still being picked over and they talked and talked and talked. About the future, about the past, about where they were going and where they had been._

_If there was a paradise on earth, this was it._

"_So when's the happy day you two?"_

_For a moment Squall looked like a deer caught in headlights, and even Rinoa burst out laughing. she grabbed his hand and swung it around her head so that his arm rested on her neck. "Whenever I can convince him that we're really all done here. We're really done, right?"_

_Quistis shrugged, the smile still on her face. "Everything else is just…cleaning up." She was lying, but it was a lie she could live with. Already Cid had taken her aside even before the party had ended. _It's going to be a long road Quistis. I know we can count on you,_ he had told her. One country would need extensive re-building from a huge influx of monsters from the Lunar Cry. Another would be the subject of endless debate as those nations big enough to have a voice at the table decided what exactly would be done with Galbadia. Quistis knew that Dollet would be taking a special interest in that. She didn't know their new leader personally but she knew the history. That wasn't going to be a pleasant conversation. "Yeah, I'd say we're done." Let Rinoa have her time in the sun. If she really wanted to join SeeD like she had told Squall, she'd learn better soon enough._

"_What about you guys?" Rinoa asked._

_Zell and Irvine gave an almost coordinated shrug. They knew what they would be doing. Irvine and Selphie were already talking about going back to Trabia to finish rebuilding that luckless Garden, and Zell…Zell was Zell. No matter how hard she tried Quistis couldn't imagine the young man doing as anything other than a SeeD._

"_What about you Quisty?" Selphie said._

_Quistis saw eyes looking at her and suddenly couldn't come up with an answer. "Me? I guess I'll…" she laughed when nothing materialised. There was at least one fact she knew well enough. She wasn't going to back into being an instructor. Cid had been right, she simply wasn't instructor material. She was impatient with those who didn't learn fast, played favourites with those who did. Had no idea how to reduce ideas down far enough to teach the complex issues to kids barely old enough to tie their own shoes. He had suggested another course, and she had been stewing on it all night. Whether she took him up on his offer or not though she certainly wasn't going to tell anyone yet. "I'll face that question tomorrow when we're all not quite so drunk."_

_Irvine nodded sombrely. "Excellent point of view. That calls for a drink. Hey!" This last as Selphie's hand snapped out for the bottle._

"_That's enough, you. Big day tomorrow."_

"_You're leaving already?" Quistis asked in surprise._

_Selphie nodded vigorously. "Lots of stuff to get done up there Quisty. Hey, idea! You can come up and help out!" Selphie leaned forward, and they all could see the gleam in her eyes when she latched onto an idea. "You guys never really saw Trabia before right? We could show you around."_

"_Show us all the snow you mean," Zell muttered_

"_Quiet, you. I mean there's not _just_ snow. There's tons of stuff up there. You'd be amazed!"_

_Quistis waved a hand as if to ward off the excessive enthusiasm of the young girl. Well, not a girl anymore. None of them had been children, not for a long year now. They'd seen too much to go back to being those people._

* * *

><p>She's broken out of her reverie as suddenly a shape looms out of the distance, grabs hold of her shoulders, and <em>shakes.<em>

"Are you there? It that you?"

She looks up and squints against the glare of the white cell, the place she retreated into her mind specifically to get away from. She can't remember why she hates it so much, but she does. Just another fact lost to the nameless ocean.

A man stood in front of her, frantically looking around himself. He was clearly a nervous wreck. After a couple of seconds of listening at the door he hurried into the white box that was her world and knelt down beside her. "Hyne knows I'm so sorry I couldn't get here sooner. I-"

The man was frantic, and his presence was stirring up memories around her. More accurately the place those memories used to be. Like fragments of shrapnel left after a bomb had struck there were still small pieces she could pick up and examine. One of those pieces had a name. "Alec?"

The blonde man looked up at her in alarm. A single _click_ and a weight suddenly falls from her hands as the shackles drop to the ground. In shock she lifts her hands farther than she has in...in what _must_ be years, and the first thing they meet is the other man's face. He pushes them down but gently, and with a smile. Some of that alarm seems gone now, but he was still clearly on edge. She looks past him at the open – _open! – _door and for a moment she thinks she sees a black shadow across it, but then he blocks her view as he unlocks the chains holding her down. "No. That person was never real. What do you remember?"

_Do you remember?_

_Your name is…is…_

_What is it?_

She looks into the light blue eyes of the man and says the only word remaining. To describe herself, her memories. Her past.

"Nothing."

The man leaned forward and hugged her close, and she felt herself shaking just from touching another human being. "It's okay. We'll get over this." He drew back and held a hand to her face. "First, this-" he said quietly, and gently pulled away.

She gasped in shock as silence flowed through her mind for the first time in forever, as suddenly the raging ocean that battered at her was pulled away like an instant tide, retreating away like the world's biggest drain had been pulled. But as she looked around in shock at the desolate shores it had left behind, in her surprise she loosened her grip on the last remaining book she had been holding. One more precious than all the others, and before she could get herself under control the ocean made one final grab, and wrenched it from her hands. She grabbed for it but it was already gone. Instead of a raging thing inside her skull, she found herself staring at the hand of the strange man that had rescued her as a small cold light surrounded it, emanating cold like a bizarre furnace. She knew this was the ocean that had came so close to consuming her, and tried to shy away from it. Gently the man kneeled down again, wrapped her hand around his shoulder, and lifted them both up from the ground. "Let's get out of here, we're going home."

_Where's home?_

She must have said it out loud because the blonde man smiled. "I know it might be a little confusing, but we're all here for you. You'll get better, I promise." As gently as he could the man steered her from the room, and as the white box faded away behind her she shuddered in relief. A glance at the man's hand showed the harsh cold glow already fading, and her only regret was wondering its final act of hunger had taken from her.

* * *

><p>"<em>It's beautiful."<em>

"_It really is, isn't it? I'm glad we got here in time, I wanted you to see it"_

"_Quistis, tell me you didn't move Garden here just to show me some flowers."_

"_I did."_

"_Not that I'm not flattered but…"_

_She felt something soft moving over her as Xu walked up behind and wrapped them both inside the silken dressing-gown. "I'm kidding. Laguna wanted us near the coast while the talks were ongoing. We're just a little more south than we'd original intended." She craned her neck back planted a kiss on the other woman's cheek and in return felt Xu's hands tracing lazy patterns across her body, as the pair looked out of the balcony window._

_The Flower-Cliff bloomed outside, Garden's slow patrol taking them past it at the exact right moment. When Kiros had mentioned it off-hand years back Quistis had found her train of thought derailed and she made the man tell her everything he knew. She had paid little attention to how the Cliff had come about, the years of creeping vegetation and flowers drifting down from the mainland, others carried there by enthusiasts who wanted to add their own country's mark on the massive wall of blooms. She'd memorised the images he can spoken of though and she had promised herself one day she would be there to see it. Finally she was, and she had someone to share it with._

"_Penny for your thoughts right now," Xu whispered, her breath tickling against Quistis' neck._

"_Just comparing the view inside to the one outside." She laughed as Xu spun her around and the two landed on the couch, Quistis on top. "I think there's a clear winner." Talking stopped as their lips met and she lost herself to the sensation._

"_I do love you," Xu said quietly as Quistis smiled down at her. As if there was any doubt._

_It had been a small party. Just Squall and Rinoa and Zell – Selphie and Irvine hadn't been able to tear themselves away from Trabia in time – while Cid had spoken. Xu had gripped her hand under the table as Cid had made flowery speeches and became gradually more tearful as the evening went on. Finally at some point during the night Xu had squeezed her hand and smiled at her and she had realised she wasn't living some kind of endless dream, it had really happened and she was Headmistress of Balamb Garden. Even Squall had clapped her on the back and congratulated her._

You earned it. Every moment of it_, he had said, and that phrase, from him, had gone deeper than anything else she had been told that night. Almost anything._

You earned it,_ had been Xu's repeated words in the elevator._

_At first it had been awkward. Like two teenagers who believed that they were masters of stealth, their relationship was obvious to everyone and neither of them realised it. When Quistis had finally worked up the nerve to tell someone, Squall's answer had been a simple _about time. _Rinoa had just smiled and laughed. Only Irvine had been a little nervous, and Quistis suspected that was more to do with his embarrassment at hitting on her all those years ago rather than any deep-seated phobias. After that their relationship had progressed quickly. Xu still had quarters in the residential wings but she rarely used it, more often sleeping in Quistis' new lodging in the MD level._

"_Just one promise, one question" Xu whispered as they sat there staring at each other. "About you and Squall…"_

_It took her a second to realise she was being serious. For all the stoic mask Xu presented to the world there was something underneath that she didn't quite have a handle on yet, something vulnerable that suspected everything and trusted nothing. Something that _did_ look a gift horse in the mouth. "There's nothing between me and Squall. He's practically my younger brother." She noticed Xu blushing, and the fetching way the blush reached all the way down to her chest. "Love, it was…it was confusing." Buried memories and Guardian-amnesia combined with simple teenage hormones. When finally she had stepped back from herself and looked she had realised what she had felt for the man had never truly been real. Just another illusion._

"And_ one promise," Xu said._

"_Anything." She meant it, and would always mean it._

"_Promise me you'll-"_

* * *

><p>She had to shield her eyes from the sun's harsh glare and almost toppled over, her rescuers arms around her shoulders the only thing keeping her up.<p>

"Almas, help me with her," the blonde man said, and a thin shape detached itself from the walls. For a moment she felt the urge to shrink back away, a half-eaten memory of some other similar thing that had come for her. But this was no gray nothingness. The young woman before her was perfect, all barely-contained energy, black hair waving gently in the breeze and skin glowing like the sun. Only the eyes were gray, and it wasn't the dull dead ray of cataracts or fog but the soft greyish-white of pearls. There was something familiar in those eyes, some hint of a blue glow she almost recognised. Just another fragment lost.

"Mother."

She almost fell again as the word came in through her ears and straight to her brain. _No. That can't be. _ The girl was too old to be…

"No, she's not your child. But in a way she's your daughter."

She shook off his arm and strode over to the parapet, the girl squeaking in alarm and following close behind. Grabbing the cast-iron railings of the bars she took in a deep breath and tasted salt. She opened her eyes and looked down onto a city she didn't recognise. "Where is this?" She looked back into the strange man's eyes. "_Who are you people? WHO AM I?"_

The young thing the man had called Almas looked warily between the two, sensing some argument. The man stared at Quistis for long, long seconds before the man who had once worn the name Alec like a mask spoke again. "My name is Morden. Morden Aimsland."

"I…" _I know that name._

"Of course you do." Without warning his arms came around and swept her into his embrace, and he held her close as he whispered in her ear. "Your old self is gone. A fake self. But I can give you a new one, a _better_ one. Here, take it." His hand found hers and as he gripped it something flowed between them. The empty space in her mind that had held her libraries of memories and knowledge roared and fluttered as new pages and volumes replaced the ones that had been taken. She looked at the titles, leafed through the contents, and the new but somehow familiar memories flowed out into the gaps and left no room for doubt.

She looked into his eyes, and smiled.


	28. Irvine Kinneas

"It'll be nice to see the place again."

"Mmm."

"Get out of this gloomy trap and back into the sun! Like a real holiday, even if we're working."

"Mmm."

"You know, get some real _air_."

"Mmm."

"Alright, spill it."

Irvine turned, his hands still fiddling around with the mall object he had picked up from the shelf. "What? I'm fine, just a little tired is all."

Selphie stared back at him. "You're not fooling me cowboy, out with it."

It was a strange relationship and they would probably be the first to admit it. The pushed and pulled each other forward. Selphie was driven by a strange combination of ambition and the pure desire to help people. Most of the time the two horses ran forward in perfect stride and dragged them both along with them, but occasionally one of the other would pull ahead, and Irvine would get them back into stride before Selphie did something she'd regret later. Irvine had a sniper's mind and outlook. He was perfectly content to let things come to him and deal with them at his own pace, and sometimes it took Selphie to make him see that sometimes he had to reach out for his goals, rather than simply wait for them to arrival. He had gone with her gladly to Trabia but she had been the one to convince him into overseeing the Garden with her instead of under her. She had been the one to focus on rebuilding Trabia but he had been the one to suggest using it as a centre of government for the continent. Spending most of their time in the frozen white expanse of Trabia, it had been the strangest courtship Irvine had ever known, but at the end of the day when they came back home to each other he knew he wouldn't have swapped it for anything.

He flicked the metal carving over to Selphie, who caught it without a second glance. "Just an old memory is all." Sometimes he wondered whether it was worth wearing the thing. These days it seemed to bring nothing but trouble. Deling City stewed half in resentment and half in hatred from Xu's rampage. To the east by the sea lied a city that seemed to swallow up anything they sent at it and gave out nothing. Fujin and Raijin had vanished into its maw, the letters they had sent out via the post – something Irvine found totally ludicrous but according to Seifer made perfect sense (_what, are they going to search every little thing coming in and out of that city?) _painting a picture that grew grimmer by the week. Squall had called for the Ragnarok a week ago and only bad timing – the ship was in drydock for repairs – had meant they were still there to receive Fujin's newest transmission when it came in. Her prose was as tight and clipped as her speech.

_Activity among civilian cult dropped since last letter. The fanatics have died down and people have gone back to work. Aimsland's takeover is de-facto complete now and seen as a normal state of affairs. Reports coming from source in the palace has seen Cult shakeup, possibly internal purge: Nerva reported dead, Jordin missing. Aimsland now in total control of Dolletian government. Prepared to name Zell's attacker from Centra; answers to Kettil, seems to act as bodyguard/confidant for Aimsland. Reports of new personnel unconfirmed. Two women seen around the palace in Aimsland's presence, possible conspirators/elites brought out of hiding. Enemy status to follow. _And then lists of troop dispositions and movements and positions that had made Irvine's eyes water even as Squall's had drank them in. _More news as we get it. Regards. F+R, Z+N._

She turned it over in her hand and the SeeD sigil stood out white-and-black against the ornate scrolling surrounding it. But the blue cross that backed it was red. Not Balamb Garden, but Galbadia. "You don't talk about it much."

It's true, he didn't. Whether it was because he had no wish to unburden himself to others or because he simply didn't think it worth sharing he'd never really thought about. It simply wasn't an issue for him in the way it was for some of the other Gang members. He knew Squall and Rinoa carried weights from their past; black holes that had seemed to pull at them. Squall and what passed for family for him; the Gang, Ellone, an aging couple living in seclusion by the mountains. He had no true family so he made do with what he had, and was usually happy with that, usually. Rinoa and the past she had run away from but somehow seemed to have been dragged back into. The others he had no idea about. Zell _had_ a family. Whatever parents had left him at the old stone orphanage simply didn't exist to him anymore, he was Mama Dincht's son now. Quistis was…he rarely had any idea what Quistis was thinking. He'd never had the easy friendship with her the way he had with Zell or Squall, or like she had with Rinoa. They were simply too different. They may have been brother and sister but they didn't always like each other. "There's nothing much to tell."

Selphie smiled at his reticence. "Oh come _ooooon_. I never even got to see G-Garden before it got all torn up. What was it like back there?"

The first time he had realised who they were back he had been so shocked he'd practically fell down. He could still see her face through the gunsights, and it had all just come together in that moment, and he hadn't been able to do it. He just hadn't been able to take the shot. Eventually his SeeD training had taken over from his irrational brain but the damage had already been done. He'd wanted to take Squall aside and shout _when were you going to let me know._ It was only later he realised that they didn't know. He could have stood there with them and said _don't you remember?_ but he knew they would simply have wondered what was wrong with him. One more nonsense action from the gunman who had failed the one job he'd had. They'd pieced it all together later, in that snow-covered basketball court in Selphie's ruined home, but Irvine had always known. "It was a lot more military." He had think back. It had been a while, and not so many good memories. "Nothing like Balamb Garden."

_Reveille. Morning lessons. Morning drills. Break fro lunch. Afternoon lessons and drills. Private tutoring. Repeat. Day after day year after year, and all in that gunmetal steel coffin they called a school. Even back then Deling and his cronies had done as much as they could to try and lay their mark on the place. They had wanted Galbadia Garden to be their own personal officer training school and Cid hadn't told them otherwise. Cid had kept the school under his control but Martine had been his price, and Martine was a military man through and through. It had been a rough childhood._

"Sounds pretty harsh."

Irvine kept packing as he spoke, mainly to have to an excuse to keep his hands moving and his face away, so Selphie wouldn't see the expression on his face. "Well, it was better than the alternative. Galbadia wasn't huge on propping up the downtrodden back then."

"No change there then."

Once he might have argued about that, back when he had been growing up. Now after seeing the rest of the world, places he had only ever expected to read about in books, he knew better. "More or less. After I left the orphanage it was pretty much the only place to go for war orphans."

Selphie cleared her throat and Irvine turned around to catch her momentarily unawares. "Did you never wonder…?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I wondered. I mean, of course I wondered." He sighed. "I found out."

Her head snapped up and she stared at him in shock. "You…I…_what?"_

Irvine shook his head. "Not right now okay." He paused for a second as he considered his responses. Finally he realised if he really did love her as much as he thought he did, there was really only one he could give. "Later."

The rest of the packing went in silence.

* * *

><p>"When you said <em>later<em> I thought you were just distracting me and meant, like, never. Not _actually_ later."

The winter slush of half-melted snow that covered Deling City's streets made walking so treacherous they were using their Trabian boots underneath their clothes. Even though the worst of the snow – something a Trabian would have called a mild fall – had been turned by a million stamping feet into the gray slush that gave the city the appearance of having a bucket of dirty water into it. The spell that had been cast by the snow had finally faded, and the drab city had emerged from beneath the pristine white.

Irvine gave a small smile as they walked down the street. He wasn't even really thinking about it, just letting his feet do the walking, remembering on their own the old path towards…well. Towards their destination. "Hey, gotta leave something for the others to do." They'd made their excuses and left the staff to finish packing. Not everyone was leaving with the Gang. Some would be staying behind to maintain _some_ form of government after Xu's murderous spree had cut the head from the nation's leadership, and Irvine had met and talked with the very earnest young man that would be her replacement. Otherwise though SeeD would be withdrawing from Galbadia. "Let them do some work for a change."

"Seems a shame. I just wish…" Selphie shook her head, unable to find the words she needed. "I wish we could have helped more."

Irvine stayed quiet. He had his own solution to the problem of Galbadia, but probably not in the way that Selphie was hoping. He searched around for something to say when mercifully his feet stopped, and he looked up at the place he had been looking for. "Here."

Selphie's expression betrayed her thoughts totally. The building they stood before was a wreck. Boarded windows peppered the stone façade, and the doors had long since rotted away. Whatever this place had been before, it was a home for rats now.

"This was what they threatened us with. It used to be run by some old religious order – not cultists, just a little crazy – that took in street kids. I used to-" He stopped for a second, short of breath as the memories caught up with him, and he felt Selphie's hand encase his own "-I used to worry about this. I mean _really_ worry. They took us nearby on a training mission once, we couldn't have been older than nine or ten I think, and we saw what this place was like. After that you made damn sure you did your homework. This place wasn't like Mr Kramer's orphanage. I mean it _really_ wasn't. All they needed to do was keep you alive and in clothes and mainly they didn't give a shit what else happened. Lots of bad tales out of this place. Seifer and Fujin came through here, if you believe those stories. S'where she got her eye. Or lost it I guess, hah."

Selphie looked aghast. "And people _put up_ with this?"

Irvine gently led them away from the old broken building. It cast a shadow on the ground before him and they left it and the sun came back out he felt the smallest bit of relief, as if just standing in the shadow of the thing could somehow cause it to reach out and grab him and drag him back. "It was the First War, Selphie. Lots of war orphans started filling up the streets, when President Deling realised Esthar wasn't just any other nation he could smash down with his bootheels. He threw hundreds of men and women into the meat-grinder, just to keep Adel away from Deling. Esthar held most of the east and south of the continent. Back then if you didn't live in Deling you lived in fear."

"I was in Trabia. They never even came up north," Selphie said meekly. She hung her head in silence as they walked through the city's byways. Irvine led the way, down twisting streets, deeper into the heart of the city. She didn't recognise this area but she could tell it was _old._ Half the streets were falling apart, weeds growing up through cracks in the pavement, no people except them in sight. Even the sounds of cars coming from the rest of the city seemed muted, as if a dome had been lowered onto the couple.

"So yeah. I was damn lucky. Cid and Edea were…they were something else. Then I went to G-Garden and I just…didn't think about much else. Not until the Second War." _Until you._ He felt frost on the grass crunch beneath his boots, and looked up to see the wrought iron gates before them. "We're here."

"Is this…"

He pushed aside the gate into the cemetery. "Yeah. It is." The gate swung open easily, oiled by the sons and daughter and grandchildren of the people inside. He had taken his own turn, whenever he passed by and noticed the weeds were encroaching on the stone tablets, or the walls were starting to buckle under the years. He could see Selphie turning this way and that as though trying to catch all the names of the headstones. The path was well worn and it only took a minute of silence before they found their way there, and Irvine reached into his coat. Flowers at this time of year would have been dead of cold before the week was out. He made do with what he had, what he thought they might have liked, and laid the small picture at the foot of the headstone. Erosion had taken away the dates long before he had finally tracked down the grave, but the names were still visible, and he kept them that way.

_Arren & Reagan Kinneas  
>Rest Together Now<br>19-_

"I visit whenever we're in Galbadia." He felt light-headed, like the ground was pulling at him and he didn't have the strength to resist it. No matter how many times he came here he never got over it. He'd went as far as he could to find them, pored through endless records and talked to as many old soldiers as he could find. Even then he had found out precious little about them. "He died in the war. He wasn't particularly important, just another soldier. My mother…I couldn't find anything at all."

"But at least you know," Selphie said quietly.

Irvine turned to her, away from the headstone. "You never wondered?"

She shrugged. "They must have good reasons. Maybe they're…maybe I'm like you. Maybe they couldn't take care of me and wanted a better life for me. Maybe they didn't want me and gave me away-" _I can't imagine anyone thinking that,_ Irvine thought "-or maybe it was something else." She smiled at him, and the chill from the graveyard dissipated just a tiny bit. "Whichever way it was, it must have been for the best in the end." She leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "It brought me to you, didn't it?" She drew her coat around her as she looked around the old graveyard. "It's nice you do this. It's a shame Squall and the others don't have something like this."

Typical Selphie, to be thinking of others even as she thought about herself. "Well, maybe one day they'll have their chance."

She gripped his hand, and he could feel her warmth even as the cold air tried to steal it away.

"Come on loverboy, let's go home."

* * *

><p>Her eyes lit up as the crimson hull came into view, passing over the city like a roaring demon. Which it was, sort of. The Ragnarok touched down on the edge of the city, a flat plain already cleared of it. Some of the scorch-marks from its last landing still remained; months ago when he and Selphie had come to the city back when the biggest problem they had was only a dead SeeD of their own, and not a silent hole to the east that sucked up all information and gave out nothing in return.<p>

_God Irvine, listen to yourself. 'Only'?_

Selphie laughed and practically jumped up and down as the massive ship dropped out of the sky and lowered its boarding ramp, revealing the figure standing there waiting for them. "Look!" She was quicker off the mark than he was and Irvine had to jog to catch up as Selphie came up to the man coming down the ramp and embraced him.

"Can't you tame that woman Kinneas?" Seifer muttered as he caught up to the pair.

"I'd like to see anyone try it," he shot back, and turned to the newcomer. "Kiros, this is an unexpected pleasure." _Something's wrong._

The black man didn't smile. "Irvine. It's been a while." He didn't waste any time. "Where's Squall?"

"Went back a few days ago to make things ready for the rest of us." With Xu and Nida gone Garden had been running on autopilot. Squall had told them he was headed back early to lick it back into gear and Irvine had let the man go. He couldn't even imagine what Squall was going through with Rinoa gone. Didn't want to imagine. He'd simply let the man go, gave him some space. "He didn't tell you?"

Kiros looked from Irvine to Seifer, who shrugged as if to say _I'm not Leonhart's keeper_, and turned back. "No, he didn't. I was hoping he would be here."

"What's wrong, old man?"

Kiros had been Laguna's best friend and confidant for longer than any of the Gang had been alive. He had fought across Galbadia with the man in the first War, stood beside him in the rebellion against Adel and had taken his place as the President of Esthar's right-hand man. For all that the two still disagreed as much as they thought the same. Laguna was forever trying to see the good in everyone, and Kiros always had to pull his boss back down to earth. Irvine knew it had been him that had recruited Seifer and Fujin into the Galbadian rebuilding effort, and him that had started investigating the cultists that had popped up across the world. Like a spider making sure his web was secure, Kiros made sure Esthar ran like clockwork while Laguna tried to fix the world. "We've found Rinoa."

There was a beat of time that passed in silence, the time it took for Irvine's brain to process the words. Finally when he realised he'd heard the man corrected he couldn't really think of anything else to say. "What?" God, he sounded like an idiot.

"I said-"

"Where?" Seifer asked before Irvine could open his mouth.

For the first time in Irvine's memory Kiros hesitated to answer. The black man just sighed and shook his head. "There's no way to- there's no way. This isn't the time or the place. You need to come with me."

"Well that's why the Raggy's here right?" Selphie asked. "We're ready to leave in a day or so, if you just-"

Kiros cut her off. In the background the engines of the Ragnarok whirred onward, the power of the starship keeping it ready to leave, and Irvine realised how serious the other man was being. "Sorry but time's become a factor for us." When he spoke _us_ Irvine knew what he really meant was _Esthar._ "You need to go _now._"

* * *

><p>The ground faded away as the ship took flight, and Irvine watched as the city fell behind them. The soundproof hull of the ship gave the scene an eerie silence. Selphie as usual whenever she rode the Estharian technological wonder wasn't paying a single bit of attention, all of it being focussed on trying to convince the luckless pilot to hand over the controls. Luckily the man they'd sent this time seemed a lot less pliable than the previous driver, and he was glad of it. When Selphie had skills with technology that went above and beyond anything he had, her flying skills could best be described as enthusiastic, and more bluntly dangerous as hell. He turned to Kiros to distract him from the ground racing below. Growing up in a world where the fastest method of trans-continental travel was either taking an ancient town-sized flying machine over open ocean or literally walking across a big bridge, he wasn't used to seeing anything move that fast. It didn't matter how comfortable the seating was. "So what's so important you're taking us directly to Esthar?"<p>

Kiros settled into his seat. It was obvious something was bothering the older man but Irvine was willing to wait. Even with the sheer speed of the thing they still had to endure several hours in the metal can. "We've had people out searching for Rinoa since you told us she vanished." He looked Irvine directly in the eye. "There's no way we were not going to look, you understand right? We're not not worried about her we're worried _for_ her. Lots of people out there hate Sorceresses."

Irvine knew he wasn't trying to pacify him. He was saying it for Squall's benefit, whenever Irvine told him. "I don't think he'd mind you watching out for her. Right now I think he'd jump on anything you can give him." He knew he was right. Squall without Rinoa around was almost a different man.

"She went to Centra." Kiros raised a hand to forestall Irvine's response. "It's what she's doing in Centra that has us worried."

"'Us' being?"

"Laguna. Me. Esthar, really. Centra's right next door after all."

Irvine ran through his mind the list of things that could worry Esthar. It was a short list. He dreaded that Kiros was about to add to it. "Go on."

"She's raising an army."

Out of all the things he could have expected that wasn't anywhere near the top of the list, and Irvine found himself dumbstruck for a moment as he realised that Kiros wasn't kidding. At least he was pretty sure. "Are you kidding?"

"No."

"Are you _kidding?"_

Kiros went on as though Irvine hadn't spoken. "When she got there she must have laid low at first because there was _nothing_ for a good while. I mean, nothing at all. Then we got news, cultists headed for Dollet started turning around and heading for Centra instead. On one level it makes sense, she's their Angel after all, a direct link with God. But what we don't get it-"

"Why Rinoa would do it," Selphie said. She'd been quiet for the last few minutes and now Irvine realised why.

"Basically," Kiros replied.

Selphie smiled. "Because you've got no romance in your soul, Sir Kiros. Rinoa does."

He cracked a small grin at the use of her old name for him, when their souls had been thrown back in time by Ellone into their skins. She had been _very_ impressed with him. "Guilty. Go on."

"She's raising an army, to fight against the cultistarmy." Selphie sighed. Unlike Kiros, she _did_ have a romantic streak, and it was a mile wide. "She wants the good people of the world to drive out Aimsland from Dollet, and bring peace." She smiled. "I knew she'd have a good reason."

Irvine wasn't so sure. "She already _has_ an army. SeeD."

Selphie shook her head. "You don't know Rinoa." She sat up and looked at them. "She blames herself. All these cultists are about Sorcery. She thinks all this; the attacks, the coup in Dollet, Quisty being taken, she thinks it's all her fault and she wants to put it right."

Kiros bowed to the young woman's expertise. "You think she could do it."

Selphie shrugged. "We'll see, I guess. She's a Sorceress, there's not much they can't do, if they really want it bad enough. Maybe she is possessed, by herself." There was a simple finality to the phrase that made Irvine uncomfortable.

A thought rushed into Irvine's skull. "Where _is_ Ellone?"

"She's safe with us in Esthar." The White SeeDs had brought her back when Time Compression – the _first_ Time Compression, now – had ended. Not even the most hard-line of their number had thought the only remaining Sorceress – Rinoa – a threat. Now Irvine wasn't so sure that was the case. It made him feel like a heel to even think it. _For God's sake man it's _Rinoa _you're thinking that about_! Kiros went on talking. "Ultimecia is dead. I mean _really_ dead. But when you deal with Sorceresses you can't let things like that get in their way." He shrugged and Selphie and Irvine both could see how tired he was. "It's getting weird out there. Rinoa runs off to Centra, new people keep popping up in Dollet. Aimsland has his army, he just needs to bring it all together. We still don't know _why_ he's doing what he's doing. He'd be insane to invade Balamb and yet the ships are there in Dollet anyway."

"Assuming he could even find Balamb." The first thing Squall had done when Fujin's first communiqué had come in was to send Balamb out to sea. Unless Dollet suddenly gained access to Esthar-level technology there was no way they could find it in the world's ocean. Something nagged at Irvine's brain. "What would you need, to search an ocean?"

Kiros shrugged. "A fleet of Ragnaroks. Some way of getting into orbit and throwing a bunch of huge cameras up there. We'd know if they did." As if that would ever happen. Being the only nation-state with the strength to put anything beyond the sky, Esthar _owned_ space.

"Magic?"

"No GF would be strong enough. Not even Eden."

_Wait. _Irvine felt his skin crawl. He was remembering something, something that had happened weeks ago but was coming back with all the clarity of a picture hung on a wall. It was a picture of white walls and bloodstained beds and medical equipment. _There's no way. _"What about Sorcery?"_ There's no fucking way._

"Sure, but Rinoa would never do it."

_Oh my God they did it, didn't they. _"What if there was another Sorceress out there?"

Kiros and Selphie both looked at him like he was crazy. "There's only ever one Sorceress alive at any one time. That's the whole point, remember?" Power passed down like an heirloom, never shared.

He knew it. He couldn't say why he was so certain but somehow he absolutely knew it. "Kiros I don't think that's quite the case anymore." He opened his mouth and talked. Talked about what they had found in Deling's underbelly, talked about the things he'd read there and thrown out of his mind in disgust. Lucky that the part of his mind that was a soldier had kept them.

Kiros was quiet as Irvine talked and described the laboratories that he and Xu had uncovered, the things that he had read and the ruins they had seen. When the man finished for a moment there was silence in the cockpit, only the raging engines vibrating below them. When Kiros finally spoke he injected into the words all the disgust and exasperation and anger he could. "People think they're so goddamn smart, don't they?"

Selphie looked from one person to the other. "The labs down there. They were making _Sorceresses?_"

Irvine nodded. Suddenly y he felt as tired as Kiros looked. "Or trying to."

Selphie shook her head. "But if they have Sorceresses why didn't…I mean why not use them?" Sorcery was on a level above magic, a level above technology. Even a magical inferno could be put out with enough fire-hoses and water, but against pure Sorcery normal rules melted away. "Who would know about stuff like this?"

Irvine only hesitated for a split second. He stood and walked up to the man sitting at the controls. "Turn us around son. We're not going to Balamb."

"Where to, sir?"

Irvine turned around and saw Kiros nodding. He looked back, and over the pilot's chair he could see the horizon stretching out before him. He'd never had a problem with heights. Hadn't been allowed to, as a sniper expected to wait for his target on whatever perch he could, regardless of height. As a child he'd looked at the sky and saw shapes in the clouds that he'd dreamed could tell him the future. This far up the clouds were below them, and in the endless blue expanse he could see nothing at all.

"Esthar. We're going to talk to Laguna. Irvine don't take this the wrong way but I _really_ hope you're wrong."

Irivne hoped so too.

The ship flew east.


	29. Rinoa

_Everything has changed. I can feel it in bones, in the bones of the old castle. Like something had hooked her and was pulling inside her now, pulling her upwards. The colours in the rainbow sky moved in frantic ways and I know that they're not as thick as they once were. I feel that if I reached up and brushed against its surface I would feel it stretch and tear and let my fingertips through into whatever lies above._

_I have had enough. If my prayers and dreams have been answered and there is finally a way out of this hell then I will take it. There is nothing else left to hold me here. My once-companion is a soulless shell and this world is gray and empty. The little power I have left should serve to bear me to the sky. After that it is in Hyne's hands, if there truly is such a godlike being. If he cares what we think or ask of him._

_As if in response to my decision my memory rears up again. This one I held close, for many reasons, but buried down where it could do no harm. Like a rose made out of cut glass, beautiful but deadly to the touch. It is the last time I saw his face. The last time I heard his voice._

* * *

><p><em>I'm staring down at them from the throne. Even though it's uncomfortable and scratchy and pricks at my skin with its thorns I sit here anyway. Something tells me I should. Their faces are so familiar, faces I've seen a thousand times from my memory. I'm down there too of course, stood next to him. For a moment I feel a surge of incredible anger and rage at the silent girl staring up at me. How dare she think she deserves him. Of course I thought the same way once, when it was me staring up. She's a little different than I was. Her hair is a lighter shade of black, and although it's too far in the mist for me to remember clearly I don't recall that cloak at all. The difference is there in all of them, in ways I can see and doubtless in ways I cannot.<em>

_That arrogant and playful cowboy is trying to hide a limp and failing. His expression of loathing is unmatched among all of them, and I wonder how he got it, what made this version of him so hateful compared to the cowboy that I travelled with. The third man – and you always did think of yourself that way, like a little brother to the other two – isn't trying to hide his own scars, even as that ludicrous tattoo is noticeable by its absence. Selphie, ah Selphie. With us you and Irvine were so close, we had to pry you apart. Not here though, and the summer dress I remember is instead a SeeD uniform too. You're there too of course, my older sister. Obvious that this iteration, this version, has avoided her fate. Your uniform is stained and bloody but still you shine like gold. You're staring half in shock and half in surprise at my guard. I can see you almost recognise her, yourself in her. But she's mine and she won't tell you what she knows. The soul that once laughed in pleasure at the castle's rose garden is gone, replaced by sharp ice._

_I wonder how it went for you all. The never-ending cycle we find ourselves is in an imperfect circle and even though the beginning and the end are always the same, always leading to the next confrontation, the journey is different enough. Next time it will be your angel sitting on this seat, or her descendant, or her successor, or her killer. Whichever way it turns out for you we will all find ourselves here again._

_And there you are. God, I've waited and dreaded and anticipated this moment for so long. You're no different. Whatever horrors or dreams or laughs that your friends have shared has skipped over you. The shell I so painfully drove you out of was never cracked here, I can see that. I wonder if she knows what she has missed. I look down on you and I feel sadness and disappointment. Maybe the two of you never made it like I did with my own. I had hoped for this one final look to be the last worthwhile memory of my life. But you are not my lion._

_Still she stares at me with the same expression I must have shown my predecessor. I know there are words to speak before we begin, but somehow I can't remember what they are. I can hear my predecessors whispering down in my mind but I ignore them. One day I'll join them, just another layer on the eternal being called Sorcery, but for now I'll tread my own path this one last time. "Well? Was I everything you thought I would be?"_

_He hasn't recognised me. "We're here to stop you." Even his voice is inside that shell. God, such a waste. I wonder what mistake she made to be unable to break it._

_They will succeed of course. Our entire existence is based around this outcome. Even if I were to stop it I wonder if I could. Whether if I tried to strike a final blow against them the power itself would hold back my hand, condemn me so that it could save itself. Sometime I think it is a living being._

"_Tell us why."_

_I stop. This is new. I look down again at the other me. More innocent than I had been maybe. I can see a thin scar across her cheek and I wonder how she got it. "Why what?"_

_She looks nervous. I can see the sorcery running through her veins. Two of in the same place is unstable, an accident waiting to happen. At least it won't be for long. Even as she speaks she looks more upset and confused than she does angry. "Why do all this! Why hurt so many people?"_

_I wonder if I should tell her the truth. It's clear she hasn't realised. I could tell her that it's all inevitable, a cycle that has been running for as long as Sorcery has existed. Each of us may be stronger but none of us have been strong enough to escape it. I could tell her that it was to rule, but I don't think even she would believe that. "To see it all end." That's close enough to the truth._

_Enough. I'm already tired. if this is my fate then so be it. I leave the throne and descend, and already they're moving towards me weapons drawn. It will be a long battle, a battle they will tell their children about. But they'll never know the truth._

_It begins._

* * *

><p><em>The memory ends and I put it back in it's padded box. I run my hands across the top of the sky and the rainbow light bends around them. I can feel the gaze of my guardian from below but she can't reach me from here. Thinking this is just one more of my occassional outbursts against my jail, she is content to merely watch. <em>

_Let her watch this._

_I push against the oil-slick surface and feel it crumple before me. Even if the power I have is fleeting and imaginary, under the present circumstances and turmoil above it is enough. Like fabric stretched too tight the sky rips and tears open above me with a rending screech, and I claw myself up through it and past it. It feels like coming out of the water. I gasp for air suddenly colder, and I open my eyes to see exactly what I expected to see._

_Another castle. Another moat. Another sky above me, rainbows just a little brighter than my own. Another woman._

_She stares at me in shock from the shores of the beach. I wonder for a second but a quick glance tells me that it isn't me. Just another sorceress trapped in her own little world, the one above my own. She must have came into the power later than me because she's noticeably older. She blinks and rubs her eyes as I struggle to the shore, the heavy robe weighing me down. Eventually I make it and I feel her hands pulling me up and out._

"_Are you…where did…are you_ real_?"_

_She has no-one then. Would this have been me, if I didn't have my blue frozen guard? However far down we are she has spent all her time her alone. Small wonder she looks so panicked. She is unable to tell the difference between real and dream anymore. I throw her hands off and step away. I can't stay here. I don't know how far upwards I must travel, and I cannot afford to stop with every phantasm I meet on the way._

"_WAIT! PLEASE!"_

_I ignore her. Let her follow if she wants, if she has the courage. My last vision of her is a lonely woman, staring up at me as I depart._

_I lose count of the worlds I enter. I had thought that my own world was near the surface but that isn't the case. I go through dozens of worlds and their occupants; women mad from loneliness. Women who dragged others into their prisons with them when they fell. Women who have found peace in this layered set of worlds only want me gone. I travel up through them all, the sky above growing lighter and more vivid with every barrier broken through. Finally I gasp for air on the shores of one more beach and I can feel something is different. I shiver uncontrollably but it isn't from the water or exhaustion. There is another one here. She has noticed me coming up through the worlds below her. She isn't like the others. She _hates.

"_Well. One more piece of dirt out of the mists of Kompression?"_

_She's stood above me, looking down with absolute arrogance. I risk a glance at the sky and I realise with shock _I can see out._ Something other than rainbows and walls. The world, the real world out there, is above and broadcasting down to me._

"_You kannot get out, little girl."_

_Without warning she picks me up and holds me dangling in front of her. She's strong. This close to the surface she's been drinking in the power the turbulence above has. She's the newest-but-one and she's very, very angry about where she has found herself._

"_It will be I that escapes this hell, and I will permit no others to follow."_

_Light encases her and I gather my own energies without thinking. Energy and heat blasts against me and it's all I can do it weather the storm. It's harsh and cutting even as it tries to prise through and batter me down and it feels like needles poking into my skin. Finally after what seems like minutes it ends, and I look out from between my fingers to see the sandy shore turned to twisted and smoking glass around us. She meant what she said._

* * *

><p><em>We fight.<em>

_I win._

_There's little else to say. She was younger and had more power but she was angry, so angry, and I had experience and finesse to see through her attacks to the gaps she arrogantly left. Thinking herself invulnerable she paid no attention to her defences and when I realised it it was trivially easy to throw my own power into those chinks. Now she's laying there on the ground, a broken shadow of a thing._

"_I should…it should have been…"_

_I wonder if we can die here. Let's find out. I hold out a hand and channel my power without thinking. It's done in a moment, and where the angry broken woman had been there's now only a black shadow on the sand. Whether we are truly living beings trapped inside Sorcery's endless prison, or just shadows in the minds of the current host, may this one at least find some rest there._

_I turn to look at the sky. The rainbow is gone now and I can see out, thoughts and experiences and senses flowing across it. I will need to make sense of it if I am to penetrate it. This isn't the skies of the worlds below, this is the outer layer, the shell that divides the Power from the host. If I am to find my way out I will need to learn it, to learn who it is we currently inhabit. Before you can escape a prison you must first know what bars hold you back. I sit on the shores of the ocean, and stare up into the sky._

_After a little while, it stares back down, and speaks._


	30. Squall Leonhart  II

He woke up to the war, literally. Sheer bad luck he had decided to stay there the night, to rest for one single day before moving on. Zone and Watts had offered gratefully when he had come into the city and he had been too tired to argue the point. He'd barely recognised the two men. The old pair of teenage revolutionaries had been sanded down and smoothed over as they had found themselves roped into real governance after the Second War had ended and suddenly Timber had found itself free from the iron fist of Galbadia. Instead of floundered like so many old soldiers Squall could have named they had survived well, and when he had arrived they'd been there to greet him. He had never really gotten along with the two, but thankfully they were forever grateful to SeeD. More thankfully, they hadn't asked what he was doing there, or why he was travelling alone.

He'd traced her steps back, asked and begged and cajoled any information he could from the people at the mansion, from people who had seen her on the streets. He'd walked her footsteps backwards out of the city, a stab of guilt at the lies he had told Irvine and Selphie. He didn't know what the pair would think when they arrived in Balamb and found him not there but he could imagine. Selphie would be upset, would demand they go back and find him. Irvine would most likely hold her in check. The cowboy had the soul of a hopeless romantic and Squall was depending on him to understand.

Rinoa or whoever had helped her leave the city had been good but not quite good enough. Things they had missed, people they had left behind, small little things that together had added up to a bright sign saying _this way _had taken him from Deling and out into the countryside. From there he'd had little to go on except a compass direction and a map, a line drawn through it pointing straight out from the city. There had been a dozen smaller towns and twice as many villages straddling that line as it led to the coast and he had made his start there. After that it had just been a hard, long slog. across miles of country. He had the clothes on his back and what little money he had been able to hide in them. Not even able to take his gunblade along, figuring a black-haired man with a scar across his face carrying the weapon would give him away quicker than a SeeD uniform, he had one of the Mansion's pistols and a combat knife hidden away. He couldn't guess where Rinoa had gone but he doubted it was anywhere a Garden emblem would be welcome, and SeeD's status worked against him out in the countryside. Places that had never seen the black-and-white emblem as anything other than just one more mercenary unit passing through to more important places, but had sure as hell heard about what had happened in Dollet. Every place he passed through he caught sight of them; earnest young men and women wearing white armbands and eyes shining with belief.

_She_ had been through there ahead of him, he could tell sometimes. The routes they took wavered across each other; hers taking an almost straight line from Deling to Dollet, his twisting and curving as he hunted down the strands of Rinoa's path. Occasionally through he would come into a village that was just a little more closed-down, a little more paranoid than the others. Towns where instead of walking with their heads held high the Faithful – no point in calling them Cultists now – would travel heads-down, if as unwilling to be recognised themselves. Xu left her mark in blood, leaving behind broken bodies and terrified paranoia. A barbed arrow that killed everything it passed on the way to its destination. At one point he had considered trying to meet up with her, but after seeing her handiwork he had nixed that idea. The Xu he remembered was nothing like the woman that had done this.

Finally one day he had disembarked from the truck he had hitched up on, thanked the man for taking him along (_no problem, rough times out there kid, watch yourself) _and looked up at a signpost for a town he knew well. Not really surprising at this point. Her trail had led him south and east, leaving towns a little less empty as she went. But unlike Xu's bladed passage, Rinoa took men and women with her. Those left behind wondered who the beautiful woman who had passed through their home was, some had wished they had left with her. Whatever plan she had had, secrecy had only been the first step apparently. When Squall had finally left the last town, he left with the knowledge his wife had passed through there with half an army. Even accounting for dim memories and country exaggeration, it left room for imagination. _What the hell was she doing?_

Whatever it was she had apparently left instructions. He hadn't been in Timber for more than a few hours when a man had casually wandered up to him in the bar he was asking around at and got his attention quickly enough.

_Mr Leonhart? We were told you might be coming through here. We were wondering if…_

He'd left before it could get awkward, as eyes were already sliding across his face, to his scar. Zone and Watts hadn't asked many questions and he had been grateful for it. He had been less grateful however, when they hadn't told him about where Rinoa had gone. The relationship between the pair and their 'princess' had always been a little unhealthy in his eyes. She had been young and full of anger at her father and her nation, and they had perhaps been a little too willing to indulge in her ideas. That so much good had come out of the arrangement might have been a happy accident, but their first meeting had resulted from it so he couldn't complain too much. At first he'd thought they were withholding her next destination out of that old sense of loyalty, until Zone had shook his head sadly and spoke on.

_We can't tell you. I mean we literally can't tell you Mr Leonhart. She did something to us. She won't _let_ us talk. She said if you made it this far you would make it the rest of the way. I'll tell you this though sir she's changed. I don't mean just older either. She's different. Those people she was travelling with, the way she dressed, even the way she talked. She kept pausing sorta and tilting her head like someone kept interrupting her, but only she could hear it. That's…that's the only way I can put it. Sorry._

They'd offered him what hospitality they had in apology and he had taken it. He'd been too confused and baffled by the information he'd learned on the way here, and what he'd learned from the two men. Like a capstone on the pyramid, only it wasn't shaped like anything he'd ever seen. He could take what he knew and put it over the image in his mind that said RINOA, but there was no way he could make the two shapes meet, no matter how much he twisted and turned it. He'd went to sleep that night staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of everything. Of what he was doing out here, far from his friends.

_Turning back into the old Squall huh. Just throw off all that useless garbage and go back into that nice warm shell? Who needs friends or family when you have yourself?_

_This is different. They wouldn't understand._

_Bullshit. You think if Selphie went missing Irvine wouldn't walk naked across Trabia to find her? You think if Xu makes it to Dollet in one piece she won't tear down the walls to get at Quistis? You think Zell and Nida and Fujin and Raijin and even _Seifer_ wouldn't have understood if you'd asked for their help? You're deluding yourself._

He'd went to sleep ignoring that voice, knowing he didn't really have an answer. He feared there wasn't one, and he'd made a horrible mistake. A mistake the old Squall would have made.

He'd woken up to war.

* * *

><p>He felt like someone was slamming drumsticks against his ears as the shots screamed overhead, low enough to make the wind ruffle his hair. The people around him were staring into the sky mouths agape as if they were watching something on a movie screen. For half a second Squall was doing the same thing, as his mind tried to adjust to what he had just seen.<p>

_We're being shelled?_

It didn't sound right though. He could have recognised artillery in his sleep but there was something…ethereal about the sounds rushing over his head now. He ran towards the dull roar of the explosions and smoke, pushing through those running away from it. He reached out, grabbing the first person who's arm he could and resorted to the oldest intelligence-gathering stratagem in the world. "What the hell's going on?"

The woman look back at him with wild eyes, flinching away from him as another low boom sounded behind them. "We're being attacked!"

He didn't bother asking who by. He let go of the woman and she ran off back into the crowd.

"_SQUALL!"_

He turned as he heard his name shouted to see… "Watts?" The young man was panting and out of breath, barely comprehensible as he babbled out words. "Get it together man. What's happening out there."

Watts took a long shuddering breath and held it. When he next spoke again it was in words Squall could understand. None of them were encouraging however. "Dollet are attacking. We don't know where they came from. The scouts we had on watch are dead or…I don't even know. We…" He stopped, as if he didn't know what words he needed to say. "We have no idea what's happening out there. Yesterday there was _nothing_, I'd swear to it." Even he spoke Squall could see the trails in the sky as more shells pounded the city. Whatever defences they were trying to destroy they were doing a good job, if Watts was as panicked as he looked. The look on the young man's face spoke the rest. He didn't know what to do.

Squall stepped in, just like he'd known he would. "Do you have any defences at all?"

Watts shook his head. "We have a militia. Sandbags."

Squall didn't let himself sigh. A civilian militia made up of those young enough to pick up a weapon, or old enough to think they still could. Volunteered who could do more harm than good if they weren't corralled properly. "It's a start. Where are they?" He prayed they hadn't already been sent out.

For once the prayers were answered. "Gathering up their weapons now. It's stuff the Galbadians left behind, it's not bad." Watts marshalled what little official dignity he had. "Mr Leonhart, the government of Trabia requests your support."

"Given."

_You're in it now, old man._

_I'm not old._

_All soldiers are old._

* * *

><p>It was better than he had thought. The Galbadian leftovers were only a few years old. Among the nervous young men and women he could see older people, those who looked a little nervous but determined enough. The uniforms had been painted green – apt enough – and they had put their own insignias on them. Among the gathered recruits (he wasn't willing to call them soldiers just yet) he could spot old resistance badges, and on a few even the old sigil of the Timber Owls. Rinoa would be proud.<p>

He clapped his hands. "_Alright listen up!"_ He made sure he had their attention before he went on. Even as he spoke he was aware of gunfire in the distance and the sounds of shelling overhead. On the way to the yard Timber's militia were gathered in he'd spotted the impacts from those unusual shells. Blackened and charred ground and ruined machinery and sometimes bloodstains and bodies where people had been unlucky, but there was something about them he couldn't quite place. Scattered among the weapons there were shards of machinery. He'd picked up a couple and put them together; the break had been seamless. Like the steel had been frozen and then shattered. He put it out of his mind. "Some of you know me and some of you don't. My name is Squall Leonhart and I've been hired by Timber to help you out." At that he spotted several awed faces, and more than a few that looked relived. He felt like a fake. "Before we can beat these bastards we need to know who and where they are, and how many! We…"

He went on, dividing and sub-dividing and assigning groups like it was just another training exercise. He tried to split up and give command to as many of the old hands as he could see, but there were still too many squads he was handing over to kids who looked young enough to not need a razor yet.

_And how old were you during the Second War?_

_I was a SeeD, it was different._

He looked at each group as they headed out. Some to start shovelling sand into bags and putting them over the buildings lining the main streets, some – the oldest – off into the forest to try and find out something, anything, about what they were facing. He paid attention to their faces as they left. He wondered which were terrified out of their skulls but went uncomplainingly. He wondered which were joking and wisecracking as they left but would fold the second a bullet passed just a little too close. He wondered which – and there were always a few – had that shiny-eyed look of the man who finally had his chance to kill and get away with it. He only hoped they would shoot the right people, and his inner-Rinoa kicked him for the thought. Finally the square was empty except those he'd deemed simply too old or young or handicapped to fight, and a smaller group he had set aside. He turned to Watts. "We'll have to hope this will do." Even as he had spoke the shelling had lowered in it's intensity, like a coughing fit finally ended. He doubted it was because they had ran out of shells.

"How does it look sir?"

Out of respect for the man's position he didn't lie. "Hard but doable." They had the forest and people who knew it, but the Cultists had surprise on their side. They were fighting for their homes but Dollet's makeshift fanatic army was fighting for their faith. He dismissed the invalids as gently as he could. It wasn't their fault. Then he turned to the final group. Most were young, some looked nervous, but all of them looked resolute. He handed each of them a small letter. "Take these and leave the town." He waited through their complaints. "No. Get these letters _out_ of here. Get to Deling City and give them to the SeeDs at the mansion there. Just ask directions, anyone will know what you're talking about. This is our lifeline."

The five nodded, understanding what Squall wasn't saying. Only one letter would need to make it through. "We won't let you down sir."

Watts and Squall watched as they left the square, heading in separate directions. He hoped that Deling would receive five letters, but somehow he didn't think so. He wondered which of the five young patriots he had sent to their deaths.

"Will that be enough?" Watts asked.

"It'll have to be."

"Now what?"

There was a huge difference between a six-person squad out in the wilderness and a giant mercenary organisation. He'd led one and he'd led the other, but never had he really been called upon to _command_. The Gang had always known what and where they had to go, and SeeD was a juggernaut that relied upon more than just him for orders. This was different.

Now Squall would find out how good a commander he really was.

* * *

><p>They came into the city not long after, and he was already there waiting for them. The shelling with it's bizarre impacts stopped, and Squall could hear the rumble of motors without even trying. Leaves and trees creaked or were just pushed down as Dollet's hijacked army trundled up to the outskirts of the town, close enough to be seen and shot at by people in the towers. Sometimes an engine would cough and halt or a scream would be heard as a sharpshooter's bullet found its mark, but the men they took down were replaced faster than the snipers could shoot.<p>

Squall had taken his own position outside of the gates, with a small squad. Without radios or reliable communications the Timber militia was more like a fractured collection than a true army. They would have to rely on themselves, coming together only when they stumbled into each other. It was how SeeD fought when outgunned and on the run, and Squall didn't like the comparison.

"Ready sir." The young girl's eyes didn't leave her sight. She couldn't have been older than-

The building shuddered at some unseen impact and Squall glanced outside to see nothing at all besides the small squad of soldiers. Either fanaticism or downright stupidity had made them keep their white armbands on and he had no trouble seeing the dark blue uniforms against the Timber forest. He spoke only one word. "Go."

The girl's gun coughed smoke and lead and the Cultist scout staring at the forest ahead so intently fell to the earth without a sound, a bright red stain across his neck. Propelling himself as fast as he could Squall leapt from the brick wall and propelled himself out across the ground between his hidey-hole and the luckless attackers. One saw him in his peripheral vision but he was already firing his weapon even as his other hand threw the weighted knife as hard as he could at the third man. Both fell with a muted shriek as the bullets and blade found their targets, and the air around them ripped with gunfire from the militia in the building. He felt air whistle by his face as one round came far closer than he would have liked, and he had to remind himself for all their dedication the young volunteers behind him weren't SeeDs.

"The _fuck-"_

The man's outraged shout was cut off as he came around the corner of the truck and met Squall coming the other way. He didn't even slow down, just dodged sideways and let his momentum carry his fist into the man's face. He crumbled with a wet thud as steel-reinforced gloves met flesh and bone, and Squall was already across the length of the squad going for the panic-stricken and babbling radioman as he withdrew the long blade from the sheath on his back. He could hear the crackle of static and hoped there hadn't been time to get a message off as he cut the man down, sword slicing through the radio as easily as the man. He grimaced with effort as he pulled the now-red blade loose and turned. The gunfire was finished and the other militia were moving out of the building to look at their handiwork. The girl that had taken down the leading man was looking down at the man she had shot like she wanted to vomit. The others were a little more subdued, but all of them were breathing hard even though they had done comparatively little. But they had done the job. He'd chosen his own team well.

He met the eyes of the nauseous girl and spoke so that only she could hear him, words he had been told once on a sandy beach, after his own first kill. "It doesn't get any easier. Get past it and move on."

She swallowed hard. "Yes sir."

Squall checked his weapons. Enough to last another encounter before he'd need to head back into town to re-supply. Everyone else was the same. He didn't need to ask, he knew how much they had come out with and how many they had fired already. There were dozens more squads out there, moving slowly towards the town. The cultists were as enthusiastic as Timber's own militia, believing themselves on holy work. They would be inexperienced and slow to unfamiliar with being thrown into combat. Squall was counting on it. Timber was surrounded by forests, places they could slide away into that the cultists would have to be suicidal to follow.

"One more," he told his squad as he checked the map. The runner had been exhausted when he found them but he'd done his job well enough. "Two miles from here. Let's go."

"Same as this time, right sir?"

He just nodded as they moved through the surrounding forest, and didn't say what he was really feeling. The letters he had entrusted to the five escapees would take weeks to get to Deling on foot. No useful help would be able to get here faster. They were trading space for time, falling back when Dollet found them on open ground and using the forests to slow and stall the advance, but Timber was a man with a noose tightening around his neck. He had considered trying to evacuate the town but the land was closed off and the only sea route took them by either Dollet or Centra. Squall could see the slaughter that would happen if the Dollet navy caught the lines of refugees on the shore and he wouldn't risk it. They were trapped here until help could arrive. What would happen after the town fell he had no idea, and he had no idea why they were here, or how they had gotten here so quiet. And that wasn't the only thing worrying him.

His ears popped as overhead something sparked through the air, leaving a trail like folded sky above. He knew that somewhere in the distance men and women would be falling apart, as something razor-sharp and cold as ice sliced through them leaving nothing but dissected bodies and shaken survivors. At first he had refused to believe but the more bodies he saw the more he had been forced to admit it. The last one he had found, a frozen corpse caught mid-smoke, arm still attached to the frozen cylinder at his lips even though his upper body lay on the ground cleanly cut from his legs. Somehow the Dolletian Army was using para-magic. He hoped-

Pure luck the man – more of a boy really – was looking past Squall as he was looking back. He caught the widened eyes and his gun seemed to come up in slow motion as something flew past Squall's peripheral vision, bright and shining in the noon light. The boy cried out and collapsed, shots fired wildly into the ground, as the knife buried itself in his leg and he collapsed. Squall was already around and some sixth sense made him dodge just in time as a second knife flew through the air where a second ago his torso had been.

The man in black came in low, hands already reaching back for more blades, and Squall was raising his sword before his mind caught up with his hands as the man's hands came around almost too fast to see. He winced in pain as one scratched his cheek on its passage and the other bounced through sheer luck from his own blade. Out of the corner of his eye he could already see half his team was down somehow, taken out silently without him even noticing, and for the first time since he had woken up and found himself dragged into the battle for Timber Squall was worried. As he watched the young girl he had talked to raise her rifle and trying to get the man in her sights, something came out from the forest, the trees bending around like a distorted image in a magnifying glass, and something white and _hot_ slammed through the space made there right into her back hard enough to Squall could feel the impact.

"Surrender, commander."

It took him a second to realise the man had stopped a few feet away from him, and wasn't speaking. He took the time to collect his thoughts (you _put your gun away you stupid idiot? What were you thinking)_ and realised he wouldn't reach the holster fast enough to make a difference. _Stall him._ "And you are?"

It didn't work. "Dincht knows," the man said, and struck.

Squall didn't have time for a reply, or even to ask what he meant as the man in black flew at him, knives already flying towards Squall. _He's fast._ He was already moving but too slow, and he felt sharpness brush against him as he dived for the nearest tree. He risked a glance backwards and saw the killer was already chasing him down, giving him no space or time to recover. _Who the hell is this guy?_ Anyone this good he'd have known about.

"Surrender, commander."

It wasn't working. Anything he tried the other man was blocking. He'd picked his moment and Squall had found himself blindsided and out-thought, with only a single sword against the man's knives. The only reason he wasn't flat on the ground and bleeding seemed to be because the man seemed to be unwilling to just kill him. He skipped backwards, taking a wary circle around his opponent as he tried to catch his breath. "And then what happens?"

The man stared at him with blank green eyes. There was no hatred or malice in them, nothing at all. "You'll be our prisoner. You'll tell the others to surrender. The killing can end."

It felt ludicrous. He could remember making much the same speech to other people, when the situations had been reversed. Strange to think he was on the other end of the stick this time. _Oh well._ He let go of the sword hilt with one hand, as if preparing to wipe his eyes.

"I'm truly sorry commander." The man leapt.

_Yes!_ Squall exulted as his free hand flew down to his vest and pulled the short string he'd left dangling there, eyes already closed and turned away as he dropped his sword and used the hand that had been holding it to cover his ears. He caught a split-second of the man in black's eyes wide in shock before the flashbang went off and the world turned white.

He staggered sideways as the ground seemed to rip apart under him. Just because he was familiar with the disabling weapon didn't help him recover from it. Ringing in his ears like thunder put him off balanced as he desperately screamed at his brain to _get moving._ He could see blurry greenery in front of him, and low moaning behind. With little other thoughts in his mind except to _get away_, he ran forward, and plunged into the woods.

* * *

><p>"-eonhart? Commander Leonhart?<em> Commander?"<em>

He heard the voice coming through the woods at him and suppressed the urge to shout at the approaching solider to keep his dumb voice down. This close to the town the gunfire and other sounds of destruction were overshadowing it anyway. He'd spent what seemed like hours in the forest, just laying low and hiding while he recovered from his own makeshift escape. He could still hear a faint ringing in his ears and he hoped to God it wasn't permanent. Finally when he judged himself fit enough to move he'd gotten his bearings and went straight for the town. His sword lay somewhere back in the forests where he had met the knifeman, along with his ammo. "Yes, what?"

"Request from Mr Watts sir, he's asked to see you."

They walked in, scurrying from door to door like rats, and Squall gaped. _We've been fighting for less than a day, what in Hyne's name happened here?_ He'd turned to his young escort and asked.

"Mr Watts will explain."

They'd met the man himself in a half-ruined shelter. On the way he'd absorbed exactly how bad it had gotten, and how fast. They'd dodged half a dozen Dollet patrols on the way, burning bodies lain in the streets where they had fallen at their posts, and all around them the houses and troops showed the same unusual wounds. Like air had solidified and thrown itself through them like a giant guillotine. After they had passed the fifth of sixth body, half-frozen and split like scissors through paper, he had simply looked away, even as his brain tried to think of where, exactly where it had seen wounds like those before.

Watts was exhausted, stood over a map of the town. Red and blue lines and symbols covered it, and as people ran down into the room and whispered his ear he would take a pen and scribble more on, or angrily scribble over blue with red. "Squall. You look like hell." As if he looked any different, and Squall felt a surge of fellow-feeling for the man thrown into a job he had never learned for but was performing admirably.

"How is it?"

Watts gestured down at the map. Something seemed to be weighing on his mind. "It's over. Already." He laughed, but there was only bitterness in it. "God, what a mess. They have magic, you know."

He did. Nothing else could have left wounds like that, or killed and maimed in unnatural ways. "How?" Nothing at that moment would have surprised him, but somehow Watts managed it anyway.

"They have sorcery."

"You're wrong." His heart fired out the words before his brain had processed what the man had said.

Watts shook his head. "No. We've seen it." He turned look past Squall. "Can you tell us again?"

Squall turned to see who Watts was pointing to, to see a small shivering figure huddled in the corner of the bombed-out basement, wrapped over in towels. He couldn't see anything of the person beneath except a pair of wide eyes that stared into nothing. As quietly as he could he walked over to the woman. He didn't recognise her, just another too-young soldier thrown into a meatgrinder. When he got closer though he could see other things. Like the blue colour of her lips, or how her eyes seemed like they didn't reflect light. He looked back at Watts, who shrugged, and back at the shell-shocked girl. "What happened?" he asked as gently as he could.

She didn't turn to look at him, she just spoke into the air, and it took him a moment to realise she was blind. "Cold eyes," she whispered, so quietly he had to lean in to catch it. "Cut me, like wires." She huddled down into the towels. "Can't feel anymore. She had beautiful eyes. Looked at me and did this. Eyes that cut like glass." A rustle, and Squall looked down and had to suppress a gasp as he saw the girl's hands. They were ruins, blackened skin where something had passed over them and burned them to a crisp, jagged tears where it looked like they had been shattered and pieced back together imperfectly. They were nightmarish. He went back over to Watts, leaving the girl to her misery.

"Rinoa didn't do this."

Watts was already shaking his head. "I know Squall I _know_, but something did this, and this isn't any magic I ever saw SeeD use. Whatever they've got it's something else and it's murdering us out there." The young man took a breath. "It's time for you to go."

He couldn't think of any reply other than "What?"

"It's…" Squall watched as the man seemed to need to force the words out of his throat. "Rinoa was…she said you'd follow her, said you'd find the next step on your own." He coughed and to Squall's shock there was blood on the man's hand when he lowered it.

"Watts…"

Watts grimaced. "No! I have to say it, no matter what she told us not to. She went to _Centra_." He barked the word out like a gunshot, and it seemed to have that effect on him. "Said what she needed was there." The effort of getting the words out was tiring him as Squall watched, and he wondered whether Rinoa knew what she had been doing when they put a mark on the man. "You need to find her, bring her back. Whatever…_god_ this hurts…whatever's out there." He wiped a trail of blood from out of his mouth. "She went to Centra. We have a boat…kept a boat on the shore for you."

Squall realised what he was saying. "I can't leave, not while-"

"_Forget_ Timber Squall, we're going down. All that's left is whether we go down easy or hard." He snarled at the thought. "It isn't going to be easy, for them either."

He didn't know what to say. One part of him wanted to stay in the town, try and do everything he could for them. But another – a much larger part – wanted with every fibre of it's being to leave them all behind right there and take that boat to Centra, after his wife. "I don't know what to say Watts."

"Just go to her, commander. I think whatever…whatever she's doing over there, she needs you with her." Watts snapped his fingers and two more soldiers – both far too young – appeared as if by magic, and the makeshift leader addressed them. "Show him where it is and don't let him come back." He gave a thin smile. "Shoot him if he tries."

Squall had no choice. He bowed out. "Thank you Watts." He turned to leave, his last sight of the Timber government a tired young-old man surrounded by broken and wounded people barely old enough to hold weapons, and in the corner the latest results of whatever horror the world had dreamt up to throw at its occupants.

"Just bring her back to us in one piece Squall. We'll be here waiting for her."

"One way or the other."

* * *

><p>"This way sir."<p>

Smoke practically covered the street as Squall and his escorts exited the bunker. He could wave his arm in front of his face and see the cordite residue sifting through his fingers. He followed the other two in silence as they moved through their ruined town. He tried to find some sympathy or worry for the two glass-eyed and shell-shocked youths, but all his thoughts were on Rinoa.

_This isn't her, this isn't _like_ her. What in God's name is she playing at?_

His memories of Rinoa ran through his skull as his feet walked automatically. The first time they had met at the SeeD ball. The base of the Timber Owls moving through the countryside. Running after her through Deling City. Carrying her across the Long Bridge on the ocean. Esthar, Galbadia, Centra, the _moon_, the end of time itself. He could still picture her; her smile, the light in her eyes, the way she looked more disappointed than angry. He couldn't place any of those features on the face of someone that had done the things this new, strange Rinoa had done.

He was so engrossed in his own thoughts he almost didn't hear it. His escort gave a halting cough, like something had stuck in his throat, and fell to his knees. At first Squall thought the boy had tripped and reached down to help him up, before he heard the low whimper of panic and saw the drops of red appearing on the ground like raindrops. He felt his stomach sink. "Hey."

He didn't look up. Just kept staring at the ground as blood pooled under his face. "Cold." His voice was a puzzled whisper.

_Eyes that cut like glass._

Later on he wouldn't know why he moved away, jumped backwards like a frightened man in a haunted house. But he did, and lived.

The boy fell apart. The girl screamed in terror and dropped her weapon as without a sound he _slid_ apart like two frozen halves whose tension had finally elapsed. Blood gushed like a river onto the ground, and his body collapsed to the pavement, sliced through in half a dozen places by something that Squall hadn't even heard but had passed beside him like a ghost, and killed. He grabbed the still-screaming soldier and pulled her as hard as he could as he dived for the nearest doorway. He looked out and saw the paving stones splitting apart, lines and cracks carved into them by whatever was doing it. Experimentally he pushed at the door behind him, but it didn't give. The girl – god, what had Watts been thinking? – had stopped screaming, and the pair were reduced to cowering like rats in the doorway as on the street in front of them something invisible and sharp cut through the air and turned the sidewalk, road, masonry and decoration into chunks of stone and wood. He'd never seen anything like it. He watched with growing nausea as in front of him the body of the luckless child-soldier was sliced apart. Glancing around he grabbed as many scraps of cloth and rubble and planks from the archway and placed them over himself and the girl. As cover it was pathetic, but he did it anyway.

_Eyes that cut like glass._

"Did we get them?"

It was a young girl's voice, and it sounded through the street with all the innocence of someone asking what the weather was like. He didn't dare look up from the doorway, afraid that even the smallest movement, or somehow just looking, would somehow bring that killing nothing back down onto him. He could feel heat against his back where it shielded him and the young girl from the street. All he could do was wait, hope and pray that his makeshift camouflage would work. Maybe it would have, but he wasn't given the time. His own body betrayed him.

"Only one. It's not him."

He didn't believe it at first, putting it off as simple confusion or concussion. There was simply no way. The young girl spoke again and he held his breath, trying to will the world into telling him he had been incorrect. He hadn't heard that voice. He hadn't.

"I'm sorry, I thought I felt him."

"It's not your fault. You're still learning. You don't have to-"

He knew that voice. Would know it from anywhere. Had heard it almost every day of his life. Knew it from a thousand conversations in the early hours of the morning as they discussed the newest recruits or the training regimen for the old hands. Knew it from a dozen _thanks_ and _no problems_ from close calls they had pulled each other from. Even as the cold and rational SeeD called Commander Leonhart was screaming at him to _STAY DOWN_ small boy he had grown up as in the stone orphanage called Squall was already looking up and around, unable to help itself as it broke cover and stepped out into the street in joy as time seemed to stop.

"Quisty?"

She looked around in surprise and for that second nothing moved in the ruined and torn-down street. It was her. No doubt of it. She stared back at him with shock in her eyes and neither of them moved as around them the gunshots and shells still fell. She had changed from the last time he had seen her, resigned and defeated, walking away from him and Rinoa in the Dollet palace. She looked strong and confident, every inch the Quistis he remembered. Her hair was down, something he'd hardly ever seen her do, and it swung freely past her shoulders in a golden rain. The whip was nowhere in sight, no weapon at all in fact. The SeeD uniform was gone too, replaced by something halfway between uniform and raiment, long loose pants over combat boots and a long double-breasted matt black jacket that still somehow managed to look martial on her.

A white armband.

_Eyes that cut like glass._

Then he looked up into her eyes. Cold blue eyes that stared back at him, eyes that seemed to shift around as they looked into his. And in them nothing but absolute loathing.

The silence broke, time resumed.

"_YOU!"_

He screamed at himself to move as those eyes bored into his, and _something_ reached out in the air between them and sliced the air like razors. He saw the street between them crack and fracture and he was running for the closest open doorway he could as the young girl next to Quistis looked on in shock.

"Imalia! It's-"

"_I know! _Stay back, he's _mine!_"

_Imalia?_

He rounded the corner so fast he had to grab the wall to stop himself skidding past it. He drew a long shuddering breath as he tried to sort his mind into something approaching order. He didn't get the chance. He felt caress the back of his neck and the wall he was leaning on _fell apart_ behind him. He jumped away before he could lose his balance, instincts already drawing his pistol as he spun and saw her

_not her can't be her but who else could it_

saw her coming at him _through_ the chunks of masonry, eyes blazing like sapphires.

"_YOU!"_

He didn't know what else to do. He turned and ran.

"_YOU TOOK MY LIFE FROM ME!"_

He heard the voice of the young woman again, excitement contrasting like nails against the fury in Quistis' voice. It was coming from _above-_

"I see him!"

He looked up and he almost lost it then, almost just stopped from shock and stood there while the family he had fought and died with bore down on him with killing intent. The younger one flew above him on wings of light, tendrils of dirty-white energy reaching out from behind her back to brush against sky, as gray eyes stared back down at him. It was the eyes that finally did it, and he finally put a name to the young-

_Sorceress?_

woman: _Almas._

He looked a moment too long. His eyes caught the movement too late and he looked back down as the black-and-gold form rushed him, covering the distance between them faster than he could react, and he was picked up and thrown against the wall of the street so hard he'd swear he heard something break. He looked across at the arm that held him there pinned, followed it along to the furious eyes of his sister.

Her voice was like ice cracking. "Leonhart." She spat his name like a curse.

He tried to find the strength to force words past her iron grip. _God, was she this strong?_ "Quisty…" The breath was lost again as she slammed him against the wall again.

"_NO!_ How _dare_ you! After what you did to us, did to _me!"_

He could see stars in his vision, and darkness at the edges. His pistol lay on the ground, might have been in another country for all the distance between him and it. "Quisty…please…"

There was nothing of her in those eyes. Eyes that crackled with blue sparks he recognised well but had never thought to be on the receiving end of. He'd seen eyes like those when she had been driven to the edge, when things had gotten really bad. Quistis Trepe had never treated Blue Magic as anything but a rabid dog, caged until it was a life-or-death and even then only let out for as long as it took to dispose of the threat. Now she stared at him and he could feel the hatred boring through him like a drill. "I could kill you right here, you couldn't stop me."

Almas touched down – _touched down - _ behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. Squall felt the grip lessen just a little, enough to make the stars go away, and he watched as Quistis looked on the younger woman – _god, she looks so different – _with affection and a smile. "Imalia we _need_ him to give to-"

"I know." She grimaced. "He's just…_he's_ the one who-"

Whatever it was she thought he had done Squall didn't have a chance to find out, as the smoke shifted and something barrelled into Almas from the back, eliciting a shriek from the woman. He saw a half-glimpse of determined eyes and a soot-stained uniform as the surviving member of his escort shoved Almas away. Quistis turned, a cry on her lips as she saw the two grenades clutched in the Timber soldier's hands. He could see what she intended but didn't have the strength to tell her to stop and run. Instead he had to watch as it happened.

"_NO!"_ A stab whipped around and formless nothing stabbed out. Blood blossomed across the girl's dirty uniform, but still she kept moving. The cuts hadn't been deep enough.

"Commander, go."

The doomed girl's voice was like a whisper but it reached into his body like a claw and dragged him up. He found his legs before he could collapse and didn't bother looking for an exit, just found the nearest square of light and threw himself at it. He saw the thing that looked and sounded but _could not _be Quistis caught halfway between him and the struggling girl, eyes outraged and furious as she tried to reach out for both of them even as the Timber patriot pulled the grenade's pins. The he saw nothing but confusion as he broke through the window and fell out onto the street, legs already pumping as he ran as fast as he could.

Behind him the house collapsed and smoke and noise rolled over him as the grenades detonated. The last thing he saw, the one glance he dared to take as he ran away, showed blue lightning crackling inside a shield of dust. Timber and stonework cascaded and bounced off of the Blue shield, and out of it Quistis stared at him as the fire rolled around and past but not through her defence. She held Almas close to her, the smaller woman shaking from the noise and blinding light. She didn't shout or gesture at him, just stared out at him with absolute hatred as Almas cowered in her arms.

Like a mother protecting her child.

* * *

><p>When he recovered he was at the edge of town. He took huge whooping gasps of clean air as he coughed and coughed and watched the dust fall away from him, cordite and lead and Hyne knew what else cascading from his body. He clutched the tiny scrap of cloth he had been given, and his feet did the thinking for him as he moved through the forest. Right now his brain was in no condition to command his body, and his instincts took over and led him gently across the few small miles to the coast. When he finally heard the wind and waves and pushed the last branch aside to catch the tiny dockyard he was half-asleep from fatigue.<p>

It was there, just like Watts had promised, a small transport boat that looked like it had been a fishing trawler before it had been converted into a troop transport. He jumped carefully over onto the ship and he said a silent prayer for the man, however he was doing back in the ruined home he loved too much to leave. Whatever luck had abandoned him in the town must have felt guilty, as the high tide slowly went out, and took Squall's vessel with it. He wanted to put as much distance between himself and...and the things he had seen…as he could.

He collapsed onto the deck and stared up at the sky. Finally the unconsciousness he had been staving off for so long bullied its way past his defences, and as darkness encroached on his view his only thought was that maybe when he woke and started the trip to Centra this would all have been some unfortunate nightmare.

He fell asleep, and dreamed of cold, sharp eyes.


	31. Kiros Seagill

"In one day? But…I mean they're hundreds of miles apart! You can't just march an army without people noticing! Did they just teleport across a goddamn continent? _How the hell did we not know about this!"_

Kiros took the outraged demands of the man without comment, or even noticeable reaction. He'd already seen it, had seen it hour ago when it had first come in and the nervous young technician had politely knocked and told him _Mr Seagill, I think there's something happening you want to know about. _He'd watched it and done his own share of reacting then, alone, where nobody else could see how nervous or afraid he looked. He was Esthar's rock, but at that moment looking at the images of that burning broken town and the people caught in it, and the people who had caused it, he could have been made of sand. "It's not a joke." As gently as he could he pushed past Irvine and turned the screen off. It slid away as he turned to the others. "This is…this _was_ Timber, yesterday. Dollet forces attacked overland. They burned the militias to rubble and installed their own puppet government." He didn't bother to go on. They've all read the textbooks, they know what happens when a city falls to an invading army. Mere occupancy wouldn't be the worst. Not by a long shot.

Of all of them it was Selphie who seemed calmest, even as Irvine was hovering between confusion and panic, and Seifer was just staring down at the floor, arms crossed like he had forgotten something important and was trying to remember it. Again and again Kiros kept forgetting how close they all were. He knew about friends forged in battle, and comradeship and all the other words he'd grown up with in a military family, but the Orphanage Gang seemed to have something that went beyond that.

"What are the chances it's fake?" the brunette asked. "Do you know who took it? Maybe…"

"It's real." A single screaming high-altitude pass by the Ragnarok had confirmed it. Fast enough to cross the town's airspace within minutes, and out again. On the way back the pilot had complained of severe headaches and nausea, and when the tech crew had checked for after-flight damage they had found warped and dented marks on the bottom of the ship. _Something_ had reached up from that town and brushed a claw against Esthar's flagship. He hadn't asked them to go back.

"What happens now? Is Balamb next?"

Irvine rounded on Seifer. "_Hey!_ Aren't you even the least bit worried about all those people-"

Seifer glared back at the cowboy unapologetically as Kiros watched the exchange. "I'm _worried_ that those crazy bastards own half a continent now, and the coastline and navy to go along with it. There's a big goddamn sword pointed right at Balamb. You think I care about Timber _at all_?"

_Alright, that's enough of that._ "Quiet, both of you." They both looked around at him like they wanted to keep arguing, but at least they were silent. _That_ was a skill he'd kept at least. "I agree this looks bad-"

"_Looks_ bad," Irvine muttered.

"-but it's no disaster." Kiros looked over at the wall, and the map displayed on its surface. It was a thing of beauty. Continents picked out in loving detail, the entire thing glowing gently as it hovered there on the wall. Colours and shapes denoting who was doing what and where. Esthar and Trabia a cool neutral white, Balamb a small speck of blue out in the ocean. On the west, angry red tendrils pulsed out from Dollet towards Timber and Winhill and half a dozen other towns. Only Deling City remained clear of the infection, and even then it was surrounded. It was bad. "We still have people over there. Dincht and the others are sending out slow and steady information from Dollet, and Deling are sending it on to us."

"Has Squall seen this?" Seifer asked quickly.

Kiros took a deep breath. He knew that one of them was bound to ask eventually. He just wished he'd had more time to prepare something. "Squall isn't at Balamb."

Irvine frowned. "What, he's still on the way?" The cowboy couldn't see Seifer behind him, smiling.

Kiros sighed inwardly. "He never went there." He saw the knowledge sink into Irvine's mind. "He went to Timber, then Centra. After Rinoa."

The room was silent except for Seifer's dry chuckle, and Irvine rounded on him. "You _knew?"_

The blonde swordsman just nodded. "I was pretty sure."

"_Why?"_

Seifer didn't blink. "It's what I'd have done," he said instantly.

Kiros was about to try and find some calming word or phrase, something he could use to defuse the situation and bring them around to thinking about solutions, instead of problems. But whatever he had been about to say was lost when the door slid open with a whisper and another nameless technician walked in. Kiros wondered if any of them ever looked anything but worried.

"Ah, sirs? We have a problem overseas. The president has asked for your presence."

* * *

><p>"<em>My name is Almas Jordin, and I am a Sorceress."<em>

"Oh bull_shit._"

Kiros ignored the outburst as he watched the transmission. He shouldn't have been surprised, really. Somehow Dollet had crossed half a continent silently, no surprise they could get back as fast. Even with the jamming down worldwide communications was bulky, unwieldy and prone to just flat-out not working. Dollet's transmission tower was a brute-force approach to the problem, pushing through the airwaves with sheer power. Unfortunately it was working perfectly.

She didn't look like the Jordin Kiros remembered. Kiros remembered a gray non-entity, hunched in on itself and away from the world. A quiet presence that killed when it's companion – dead now, and good riddance – told it to. The girl on the screen was radiant. Even watching and _knowing_ what a crock of shit it was, he was almost entranced. The off-white wings that wavered in the breeze and the thin halo enclosing that head of pure-black hair and pearl eyes. She looked like an angel down from heaven. It was disgusting.

"_I'm here to deliver a message, to the faithful who believed all along and those good people who didn't know any better."_ She stared directly into the camera as she spoke. _"You have been fooled. The angel you followed and her minions did not deliver you to salvation but _from _it."_

It took Kiros half a second to realise what she was talking about. Laguna and the others maybe half a second longer. He felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. He could still think back to that day with perfect recall. The day the world ended.

"_But we have another chance, one last chance to set things right._" She was practically wringing her hands, she was so sincere._ "Even now the false angel is raising an army, here and across the sea, along with the Gardens to stop us again."_ Almas gestured behind her at Timber. The fires were out at least. The damage looked only superficial from there. Liars. _"All of this; war, pain, death and suffering. All of it could have ended back then if we had wanted it. We _have_ that second chance now."_ She smiled into the lens, at the hundreds of thousands who had to be watching. In Deling, in Esthar, in Centra and Trabia and the hundreds of villages and towns that dotted the landscapes of the world.

Kiros thought back to Esthar's own brush with Time Compression. He had walked through the wards of blinded, half-crazed or comatose victims, those who had been just a little too sensitive or a little too close to the incomprehensible whirlwind of time. Some had come up to him convinced he was their husband or son. Others had been less crazed but utterly confused, remembering lives they had never lived. Others had simply sat and stared, slack-jawed and empty-eyed at the walls and ceilings, their minds swallowed when the Sorcery had ended. He could sympathise. Could imagine out there that there were people watching this and thinking their prayers had finally been answered, turning to look at empty chairs or spaces where their loved ones should have been. Maybe they were all headed for Dollet right now, to make that dream real.

Over his dead body.

"_All you have to do is help, and we can reach that world. If you believe, if you want that world to be real, come to Dollet and help this holy work. Help me, and my knight."_

He looked up as the angel-winged woman went out of focus, as the camera turned away, and Selphie cried out in shock. It took him only a moment to realise what he was seeing, and he was struck dumb. In the corner of his eye he saw Laguna leaning forwards with an expression somewhere between confusion and shock. Seifer was stock-still, like a statue. She looked into the camera like an arrogant conquering hero, long blonde hair floating in the breeze. Eyes that glowed like sapphires stared out at them from the screen.

_Is this real? This can't be real._

"_My name is Imalia, and I am a Knight. I led a false life, with a false name given to me by people who took away my home and birthright, and denied you your heaven."_ Even her tone was challenging. There was no pity in those eyes. Almas had been the carrot, the open palm and welcoming smile. Now this woman was the stick, the closed fist and snarling teeth. _"I address this to anyone who would stand in our way, and to the organisation of hired killers and manipulators known as SeeD."_

"Oh God no." Kiros couldn't tell who said it. All his attention was on the screen, and the woman he had once shared a drink with years ago, had laughed and strategized with, who now stared at them like dirt.

"_We don't want the war that you have given to us. We don't want war at all. All we desire is to be left alone to work. Extend us this one small courtesy and you'll find that the heaven the scriptures speak of is real, and can be with us sooner than you think."_ The eyes blazed with blue fire._ "But stand in our way and the full power of Hyne herself will fall on you and ruin your entire world. As has happened here."_ Behind her, Timber smouldered. A ghost of a smile flitted across her face. _"The false sorceress Rinoa Heartilly will only lead you into places darker than this."_

Before the broadcast even ended, Kiros was already deep in conversation with the alert and ready comms officer. The man nodded, saluted and left, and Kiros turned back just in time to the screen go black, and the room explode in noise.

* * *

><p>"Quiet, all of you."<p>

Kiros knew Laguna Loire better than any other man alive. He knew the man's strengths and weaknesses, blind-spots and depths. He knew that after himself, strangely enough, the people who knew him best were two of the three youths (even now it was hard to think of them as anything else sometimes) who had been in his and the man's heads during the Second War. For all of their magially-shared experiences though they hadn't been there for _all_ of his life, and Kiros Seagill knew there was a core of iron under Laguna's pleasant and smiling exterior.

Laguna stood from behind his desk as the screen withdrew. "Calm down."

"That's easy for you to say!" Selphie seemed near tears. Irvine and Seifer were wearing similar blank expressions. On Irvine's face it hid his confusion and fear. On Seifer's it hid equal parts calculating calm and apoplectic rage. "That was…it couldn't have…"

For Kiros it was all fitting into place. Everything that had happened since this entire mess began was slotting down into their own spaces perfectly, and the picture they showed while still half-complete made him shiver with its implications. He glanced across at Seifer. Probably he had figured out some of it as well. He doubted Irvine and Selphie were in much of a state to. He caught Laguna's nod, and took charge. "_That's enough!_ You're not helping anyone by panicking. Act like SeeDs!"

Irvine took a deep breath. "Sorry Kiros. It's just…"

"I understand. No really, I do." He gestured at the blank screen. "You told me on the ship, right? Sorcery." He shook his head. Again and again he was brought up to the sheer cliff that was the power of gods, and every time it found some new way to amaze him. "Galbadia built a little sorceress of their very own. And look where she ended up."

Irvine shook his head. "I remember Jordin and that looked nothing like her. She was…she was _nothing_, just some colourless soldier_. _She looked like she'd been put through the wringer. So turns out she was one of Galbadia's secrets huh. What happened to switch her on?"

"What happened, mister Kinneas, is _science."_

They all looked around at the new arrival. Kiros didn't know whether to be relieved or annoyed. He hadn't expected the man _himself_ to show up…

Dr Odine strode into the room like a conquering colossus. An accomplishment, considering even Selphie towered over him. Even though he was getting on in years he seemed not a speck different from the first time Kiros had met the man, rescuing a young Ellone from his lab. Even back then he had been barely interested with the outside world, so long as it gave him leave to build his expensive toys. After the Rebellion had ended Kiros had pushed for some kind of punishment for the man, but Laguna had overruled him. At the time he had told his best friend and commander it would come back to bite him on the ass, but somehow it never had. Odine had no morals or conscience. He simply did what he wanted. If that happened to be what the current government wanted as well then that was a happy accident.

Laguna had no trouble deciding between exasperation and annoyance. He sighed. "Can we help you with something doctor?" His tone was clear. _I do not have time for your shenanigans today._

"Mr Seagill asked me to come over here." Laguna glared at Kiros, but the doctor didn't seem to notice. "To educate you."

Kiros was a little off-put. "I asked minutes ago, you can't possibly know anything already."

Odine grinned and rounded on the tall black man. "But of course I can! We saw ze transmission too of course. Once we had ze correct name ze rest was merely reading."

Laguna threw his hands up; _fine, get on with it. _"Go ahead doctor."

* * *

><p>"Imalia."<p>

"That was what Quistis called herself."

Odine nodded as he walked. Laguna had made his excuses and went off to find Ward and those generals he could reach. Kiros had almost went with him but his president had disagreed. _Stay with them. They're going to need a hand on the tiller for a while I think. Keep them from capsizing, huh?_ They'd left the president's room for the basements of the palace. Like most of the city Esthar's skyscrapers had foundations that went deep into the salt plains, and Adel hadn't left the empty space to rot. During their tenure Ward had been down there half a dozen times, and every time came back to report something new. Sometimes it was double-armoured bunkers with rations to feed a family for a hundred years. Sometimes it was worse. They'd found hollow metal cubes as big as rooms with no exits or entrances, and when they had taken blowtorches to them, the things they had found inside…

Odine led them to one of those rooms now. Kiros had seen it once before. They'd called it the History Room, and what it contained was books piled high to the ceiling. His staff had ranted and raved as they read the titles but Kiros had no interest in genealogy and family lines. They had installed a table and some chairs but aside from that the room was filled with endless gunmetal shelves filled with old books. As he'd assigned some of his new staff – having people actually do what he wanted had still been a novelty to him, back then – to discovering exactly what was in them Adel thought so dangerous he had brushed a hand across them, felt the age cascading from the spines as he did so.

Odine nodded at Irvine's words as a stressed-looking librarian hurried over and whispered to him. "_Imalia!_ Such a name! So noble-sounding, so pure. Zat was the clue we needed of course. Fifth volume, if you please." This last to the nervous young man, who hurried off into the stacks. "An old Estharian name. One of my predecessors was an Imalia, I think? Ah, thank you." Odine took the thick tome and hauled it into the table. It was beautiful work, all rich leather and gold inlays. Odine stroked it like a favoured pet.

"What are we doing down here Doctor?" Kiros asked. _Get to the point._ He disliked Odine. Above and beyond the man's blank slate where his scruples should have been, he loved the sound of his own voice. Inevitably those who spent time around the eccentric man liked the sound of it a lot less. "We have serious problems for you to be-"

Odine opened the book with a heavy _thump_ as the pages hit the steel table. He looked up at them with the ages-old grin of someone who knows more than the people he is talking with, and is going to take great pleasure in explaining it all to them. "Zese are old stories. Some say myths, some say history, but no matter how you look at it ze names remain the same. Centuries ago an old house of nobles fled to Esthar to escape ze invasion of ze moon-monsters."

Kiros nodded. He knew his adopted country's lore. Centra had been a thriving civilisation once, before the Lunar Cry had unleashed a wave of monsters across the country that had swallowed up the continent in blood and erased the empire that had existed there. The old Dollet Empire had been made up of half the population that had crossed the western ocean fleeing the tide of horrors before it too had fallen. The rest of the refugees had headed east, and founded Esthar. "Go on."

Odine rubbed his hands gleefully as he turned pages. "They settled in the middle of the old salt plains and began to…how shall I say this…_repopulate _the land. Ze native Estharians already living there tried to drive them out of course, but the invading Centran family had a rather _unusual_ advantage over ze natives."

It took Kiros half a second to realise where Odine was leading them. It took Irvine and Selphie maybe half a second more. He waved a hand and nodded. _Go on._

"Ze women of the family exhibited a most unusual and varied collection of powers. Whenever the natives would attack the invaders, the results were be devastating to the poor souls." Odine tapped the book. "Ze specifics are not mentioned, but ze themes are the same. 'A great cleansing light'. They describe ze power aptly, I think."

_Sorcery._ Kiros was sick of the word.

Selphie frowned. "How does this help? I don't-"

For once Odine seemed to be paying attention. He flipped the book around and showed them the pages. It was more religious artwork than anything else; all heavy symbolism and ornate thick scrolling. But the point came across clear enough. A lone woman stop a mountain, tendrils of white power streaming from her fingertips into hordes of attacking savages arrayed around her. Beneath her, other figures did the same. But where the light of the woman was white and flowing, the light of the servants was different entirely. Where it wrapped around the savage attackers it grew sharp serrated teeth, and instead of white it was a pale blue. Where it touched the enemy, the result was drawn quite explicitly. "Ze retainers of the household had an enviable power all of their own. Handmaidens and pages fought by the matriarches of the family. They were her knights and her consorts."

Kiros read the words from the pages and felt an involuntary shudder run through him. "'_A devouring sound.' _Is this…?"

Odine nodded happily. "Blue Magic."

* * *

><p>"It's symbiotic."<p>

Kiros was alone in the room with Laguna. Irvine and Selphie had waved off for the day, the one complaining of a headache while the other just looked like he needed to sit down and process the enormity of what he had learned.

Laguna didn't look around at Kiros. He was staring out of the windows of his presidential suite, the one he used for after-hours, when he could drop the airs and graces and just act like Sergeant Laguna, Galbadian Fifth Regiment, again. Tonight he seemed to be having trouble leaving President Loire behind however. "And that means what?" From the window he looked out to see the city arrayed below him, followed by endless white salt, but Kiros knew that his vision was going much further than that. Out there beyond the horizon was Tear's Point. For Laguna it had always symbolised hidden threats, and he was glaring out there now.

Kiros went on. "The old Centran nobility kept Sorcery within the family. Very strict, very controlled. A Sorceress would die and her daughter would inherit. They used it to kill off the natives and build the original city of Esthar. Blue mages were the elite soldiers, the Sorceress was the ultimate trump card. _Obey us or we'll send Her to end you, in the meantime here's a taster._ They conquered most of the continent with that combination."

"I can believe it." Laguna had been on the receiving end of Sorcery. He still had the strange scars to prove it.

"The problem was that Sorcery isn't some amazing never-ending font of power. You have to re-charge it from _something_. If they don't _get_ that something what they recharge from is themselves, and that isn't pretty. Like a snake that eats itself." He'd memorised the passage from the book, and said it out loud now. "'A fearful disease of the mind, a terrible and uncontrollable wasting madness.' You can imagine. Blue Mages kept that madness at bay, but they did it by feeding their masters with their own power. Their souls. They kept their masters sane and powerful but died doing it."

If it had taken Kiros a second to see the metaphor it took Laguna no time at all. "Like human fuel sources and drug habit rolled all into one. God, that's a horrible thought. What happened to them?"

Kiros shrugged. "They all died. The nobles had a continent to take over after all, and the Blue mages were just vassals. They used them up like batteries and threw them out when they were empty. It took a while but according to the History eventually they just…ran out. All the lineages that had the bloodline were sacrificed and drained to conquer the country, and by the time they were done there weren't any families with the Blue magic left. Except one."

Laguna nodded, already seeing the conclusion to the sad little story. "You're telling me…"

"I did some digging. Odine was right, it's a known name. A woman called Imalia was a high councillor for King Idelbern of Esthar. King Idelbern had a daughter called Adel. When his daughter took the throne she removed her father's old staff from power, with one exception."

Laguna seemed to almost draw into himself as he heard the name. Kiros knew the president at heart really wasn't cut out for his position. He always wanted to see the best in people. Unlike countless rulers of the continent in the past, forgiveness was the rule for Laguna Loire, rather than the exception. He would rather give his enemies a thousand chances than cut them down forever. For all that though if there one person in creation the man hated, Adel was it. "What happened to her?"

Kiros knew he wasn't talking about his old nemesis. "The obvious. Adel was a Sorceress, Sorceresses eat Blue mages. She saw which way the wind was blowing when little Adel was given the Power. She sent her only son and his family packing, and faced the music alone. Councillor Imalia was executed for treason." It had been recorded in one of the newer books that Odine had pulled down. There had been pictures of the before and after. The woman who had been a councillor to kings and queens had been harsh and beautiful. The one they had pulled down from the gallows had been a husk. Adel had drunk her fill before she disposed of her.

Laguna was already surging ahead as he saw where Kiros was leading him. "And suddenly Adel hasn't got anything to keep her habit under control. But she can't stop using the Power she has either, so it ends up eating her away. 'A wasting madness'. God, was that what it was?" A reign of terror that had lasted decades, families broken and innocents taken away and taken apart at the slightest suspicion. Neither of them had been there during the worst of it but old men and women still approached them on the street, still weeping in thanks. She had been insane, as simple as that. Laguna had sometimes asked in jest why in hell Esthar had taken a Galbadian soldier as their new ruler. Kiros knew that after Adel they would have taken _anything_.

Kiros went on, the end of the story close at hand. "Sorceress Adel tried searching but the family were long gone across the ocean. Imalia's son, his wife, and _their_ son. The wife was pregnant when they left. The dates match close enough."

"Morden Aimsland is the final scion of old Esthar nobility. And Imalia Aimsland – Quistis Trepe – is his little sister."

"The last Blue mage."

* * *

><p>They were back in the palace, the next day. Kiros had given rooms to the visiting SeeDs before sealing himself and Odine off with Laguna down in the box they'd come to call the Archive. The first book had only been the start. Legions of pages stretching back from the first Sorceress Empire all the way back to Centra. The things they'd read would keep Odine up happily in his labs for weeks. Eventually Kiros had called down a clock and seen the time, and called it a night. Now they were gathered in one of the countless identical rooms. He'd just finished explaining when Irvine had stood and walked over to the window, looking out onto the city. The tall cowboy shook his head, as if trying to shake things up so they would make more sense.<p>

"Unbelievable."

"You don't have to believe it, it's simply true," Kiros replied calmly.

Of all of them Seifer looked most put-out. Kiros could guess why. All his life the intense young man had dreamed of being a Sorceress's Knight. He'd dreamed of honour and dignity and all of the things that such a title carried with it. Now here Kiros came, to tell him that his dream was a lie. That a true knight wasn't some noble consort protecting his life-long companion from danger, but a common source of energy, sucked dry to keep madness and hunger at bay before being replaced by another identical successor. When he spoke his voice was raw with anger. "And this helps us how exactly?" He caught the looks the others were giving him. "Sorry I'm not involved in your little pity-party but in case you forgot our little cult problem now has a living breathing smart-bomb, and the power to fuel it. Do we really have time to be amazed at where our dear old Instructor came from?"

"You cold-hearted son of a bitch," Irvine said in wonder.

Kiros sighed and stepped between the two. Half his life it seemed had been spent keeping polar opposites from coming into conflict. "Enough already. Seifer's right."

"_What?"_

Laguna nodded. "I'm sorry but it's true. These people were a big enough problem when all they had was an army. Now they have something much worse." The man stood and projected all the authority he had. "I didn't want to get involved, I really didn't. But this is bigger than just a regional fight now. Aimsland wants to make his own little heaven and drag us all into it with him. That speech told us how."

"You think he wants to re-start Time Compression. Could he do it?"

God, what a terrible thought. Kiros had asked himself the same question. Ultimecia and Adel had been obscenely powerful, but for all that they had been working under handicap, they now knew. If Odine was right, Aimsland had an artificial Sorceress but with a fully-charged battery just waiting to be used. Maybe that would be enough. "I don't think we can risk the chance of finding out."

Laguna nodded. President Loire stood. "Headmistress Tilmitt, am I right in thinking you are the most senior SeeD official currently active?" Selphie hesitated for a second before nodding. "Bring your people together and prepare for an all-out assault on Dollet, via Timber." He faced the others. "We have too many wildcards out there. Time to bring everyone together."

"Squall and Rinoa," Selphie said instantly.

Laguna shrugged. "From what we know they have roughly the same idea as us. These bastards have a Sorceress, well we need one too." He raised a hand as Seifer opened his mouth. "I know, I don't like thinking about the little miss that way either, but whatever she's doing on that continent _we need her_."

"I'll find her," Seifer said quickly. He stood, considered what he had just said. "Him too. I guess."

"Go." Seifer went. Kiros ran through a list in his mind, and one name shouted out from the rest. "We have one more problem. One I'd like to deal with. What do we do about Ms Tyynes?" He had kept up with reports coming across the satellites from Deling. He'd seen the map of her progress across the continent. At first he had assumed she would run straight for Dollet, and Quistis, but then her path had deviated. She was making huge looping circles around the continent, every converted village that intersected her path suddenly finding itself short one Cult leader. She was taking down the cult leadership from the bottom up, and taking them down hard. That she wasn't touching the converted or underlings but only their leaders/conmen was the one thing that gave Kiros hope the old Xu was still in there somewhere. "She's almost certainly seen what we have. How will she react?" And this was what Kiros was dreading. He liked Xu Tyynes, had met her on half a dozen occasions that Esthar and SeeD's paths had crossed. They had similar jobs and similar approaches to it. He knew Tyynes' history but had never held her parent's sins against her. Maybe the apple really didn't fall far from the tree.

Irvine shrugged again. He seemed to be doing it a lot lately. "If she saw the same broadcast as us? She'll go to Dollet, as fast as she can. If she's the old Xu when she gets there she'll find a way to meet up with Fujin and the others. If she isn't...if she isn't she'll start killing, and not stop." He stood. "I'll get a message to Fujin and the others. Either way they need to know."

Kiros nodded. "Get to work."

* * *

><p>Finally the two men sat alone in the office. Seifer had gone to procure a ship to Centra while Irvine and Selphie had went to find the Ragnarok. Odine had wandered happily back to his labs. Kiros stared down from the windows onto the city he helped rule. It seemed like recently whenever he walked past one of these he glass panes he felt the urge to look out and down. Ward had joked that he was starting to go senile, but Laguna had just nodded. <em>You're wondering whether you're doing a good job. Relax. You are.<em>

"Gil for your thoughts old man," Kiros said.

Laguna looked around at the voice of his senior aide. "Just thinking."

"About? The spectre of world destruction coming down on our heads again?"

"About convergence."

"That's a big word for you. Did you learn it today?"

"Shut up." He sighed. "They just seem so young. God, you realise I called Tilmitt headmistress? She's young enough to be my daughter and she commands an army. And here we all are again. It seems like it's always the same people who get dragged into things like this."

"SeeD make them tough. Second War made them tougher."

"One in particular."

Kiros resisted the urge to smile. _Aha._ "You'll be meeting again soon enough. Seems like the perfect time. Are you going to tell him?"

Laguna _harrumphed._ "God, don't start that again."

The urge to smile faded. "I'm serious Laguna. How many chances are you going to pass up?" One hand tapped the notes. All of what he had learned, all of what he feared. "This is serious shit here. For all you know you're not going to _get_ another chance."

"Does he even care?"

"He went to the hospital and _asked._ Of course he cares. You think just because he's unlucky enough to have _you_ as his father he wouldn't want to know?"

Laguna stood. Anyone else would have been shocked at the hesitance and indecision plain on his face. Kiros was one of the few people who wasn't. Those of the Gang that Ellone had transported into their heads would have been others. "I don't know."

Kiros sighed. Much as he wished he could take this burden from his best friend's shoulders he couldn't. Only one thing was going to, and he couldn't do it and keep a clear conscience. "He'll find out one day, soon enough. All he has to do is go to Winhill and ask _anyone_ there." He turned to leave. "We can think about the past later old friend, for now we have to look at the future."

Laguna was silent for a moment that seemed to stretch out for minutes. _God, it's really bothering him isn't it?_ "You're right. The future." What he was thinking was clear on his face.

_What we might have of it._


	32. Rinoa Heartilly II

She watched as he left the beach. Both of them did. He was wet and miserable and coughing, sand and water cascading from his clothes as he walked, but for all that he looked beautiful to her. Her knight.

"See. I told you he would come."

"_I never doubted it."_ Her voice was wistful as she replied, full of pain and sadness, and Rinoa kicked herself for being so insensitive.

"Lady, would you like us to…?" The man said.

She nodded and smiled. "Yes. Find him, bring him to me. Please." She added the last as an afterthought, but at least she remembered. For all that she had learned and done since arriving she was still _Rinoa,_ and she took great pains to stay that way. Without speaking she extended her mind, and the information dropped into the man's brain as if something he had forgotten had come back to him. He nodded and bowed and walked away from her. The bows she had been nervous about at first, but it seemed to make them feel better so she didn't push it.

"_You're lucky, they love you."_

It was still strange to hear it sometimes. Even when they spent long hours talking into the night sometimes she would be listening as the woman spoke and suddenly she's freeze up, panicking at the sound of her own voice, speaking words she wasn't thinking and sounding like _that._ So much older, the weight of years and sadness on it. "I know." She glanced back at the wall of water, the images conjured up on it. When you got right down to it, Sorcery was about moving energy from one place to the other. With enough finesse or power you could what you wanted. She had plenty of power, and the other was teaching her finesse. She'd watched it all, as Timber had fallen and burned to the invasion. Had seen Quisty as she tore through men and women like a steel blade through paper. Had watched her husband's escape to the sea and landfall on Centra's barren shore.

She'd made great progress. "Was any of this…Did any of these things happen?" She still had trouble wrapping her mind around it.

"_No. My timeline was different. Maybe this Morden died before he grew up, or his plans got caught up somewhere. None of it happened this way."_

"What about Quisty? Did you…"

The other her laughed bitterly in her mind. "_No. She was…"_ A pause like a sigh, and when next she spoke there was an old sadness there. "_She was always too noble for her own good. She found out herself, in the end. I don't remember how. She told me about it. I was scared, I wouldn't let go. I…I did questionable things to her, to keep her alive."_

When she had learned it Rinoa had spent sleepless nights worrying about it. She had stared up at the night sky – she always slept outside – and wondered just how close she had came. All the Sorceresses of times past she never knew (although she knew one now, sort of) and the ones she knew all too well. Was the only reason she wasn't like them was that sheer good luck had brought and kept her close to the one person that kept her power stable? She imagined herself a leech, all the years she had spent with her best friend slowly siphoning away and not even knowing. Would they have grown old, would one have died before the other? Would she have found herself without that anchor and became like one of _them?_ Like Ultimecia or Adel?

As much as she would have liked to she couldn't blame the voice in her head. Maybe she would have done the same thing. She generally avoided asking too any questions of the ghost in her mind. It was too depressing. Rinoa had thought about it, of course. Stories of ageless beautiful Sorceresses living through time, watching history unfold before them. Now she knew the truth, and it was nothing like the stories had said. To love once as they both did and then spend the centuries alone and unloved, or to have to keep finding new people to love, new reasons to keep going. She had changed her mind fast enough. Better to live once and die.

"_Dwelling on it again?"_

The stars moved above her. The grass – what little there was of it – felt cool against her back. She felt like the universe was staring down at her. "A little bit."

"_Don't. It's different for you. Better."_

"I'm not so sure, somedays." She could see the activity below her. Candles and lights moved too and fro on the flat grassy field at the bottom of the cliff. In the days the plain was a dry and dusty thing, but at night the drab colours of the dead continent vanished and were replaced with the lights Rinoa and her army (not followers, she wasn't quite ready to think of them that way) had brought with them. Bright warm yellows and whites from the gas and wax candles of Galbadia and Winhill, sparkling blue from the electric lights of the Estharians that had found her symbol and followed it here. She could look up into the sky or down onto the ground but either way she was looking into a sea of light. She liked the image, both of them did.

"Lady Rinoa?"

She blinked and looked around as the voice came, and she turned to see the same person that had left to find Squall looking at her again. She glanced at the sky and saw the stars weren't were they were. She'd lost track of time again. She did it often at night, just looking up at the stars or talking to her old ghost. "He's here?" She felt a shiver of excitement at what it meant.

"He's recovering in one of the-"

_Bring him to me_ was her first thought, but she pushed it away. Sometimes she could feel those angry arrogant thoughts coming through but now she fully understood what it was, and ignored it. She had used to think it was the Sorcery inside her and she had almost been correct. It was the endless ghosts that lived _inside _that Sorcery. Not many of them had been nice people. "Let him sleep, I'll see him tomorrow." She wanted to go to him _now._ But she knew how confused he could be when he woke up.

The man smiled. "Sure." He was barely out of his teens, but he'd came gladly to Centra with her. They'd crossed the ocean in whatever they could find and came here. The man that had escorted her out of Deling City had brought her across the country to Centra had left her, but after a while others followed in his footsteps. At first she had wondered why they were gathered here, the remnants of Aimsland's cult that had never left for Dollet. Then she had spent a few nights under the stars and had known. There was something pure and fresh about the old desert. Free of human interference. She felt…_closer…_to the world here than she did on the other landmasses. Centra was like an abandoned church that still kept it's sanctity.

"_Sorceresses were born in Centra. They say it's where Hyne departed from the earth after he made the world, and left half of Himself behind. They say the Power flew through the air trying to find its old master, but the only person it could find was a young girl picking flowers in a field. The Power took the shape of a wounded bird, and she took care of it in exchange for immortality. After they had lived together for a long time, a hunter came by and heard the Power singing, and wanting it for himself shot it with an arrow to cripple it. The first Sorceress cursed the hunter, and for the rest of his life and his descendant's life the hunter would have to serve the Sorceresses. The Power shed a single feather from its wing and gave it to the man. Because of his greed his curse was to always be hungry, to devour the energy of others but never satiated."_

"Is that true?"

"_It's a nice story, but no. Raine always used to say that people make up unpleasant stories to hide an even worse truth. I didn't really want to ask further."_

Rinoa felt shocked. "You knew Raine?" Ellone had talked about her adopted mother often, always with sadness.

"_She never died, in my first lifetime. She was a wonderful person."_ The other divided her life into first and second, and it had taken Rinoa a while but eventually she had understood without asking what event she used to divide the two. Would she have thought the same, if her life had followed the same path? You could go insane thinking about it.

"_Get some sleep. You have a big day ahead of you."_

She hesitated for a second before she asked. "Are you sure this is what's best?"

The ghost inside her, Rinoa Heartilly-Leonhart, was silent for a second before it spoke.

"_It's no life, to life forever. After my Squall died I thought nothing could be worse, but I was wrong. I wanted to follow him so badly but I was _scared_. People…people like Squall and Quisty and Seifer and the others aren't afraid of death. Not because they're crazy or brave but because they _know_ they'll meet it one day. It's not the same for us. We can simply…choose not to die. I was too afraid to die so I just _went on_. Before I knew it time passed me by and there I was, up in that chair in that godforsaken castle, staring down at the next cycle of SeeDs. Myself, him, all of them."_

"_Then there I was, a soul trapped inside the mind of the next Ultimecia, inside Sorcery. And it went on and on and on, and we got buried deeper and deeper as more cycles piled up."_

"It must have been horrible."

"_You have to end it somehow, Rin. Or else one day it'll be you or one of your children up in that seat, and the whole miserable thing just keeps on going. From what you've showed me this Aimsland wants to make another Time Compression but he doesn't understand what that means, not really. He thinks it's some kind of ideal where all the best parts of the past, present and future come together to make heaven, but you _don't get_ to pick and choose. Everything happens at once. A human's life might be full of life, but on either side of life and death there's an eternity of darkness. That's what he's bringing."_

"_Sorcery is vicious, Rinoa. It's like a parasite that only wants to keep itself alive, and it's twisted time around itself to make sure of that, sacrificing all of us to do it. Endless Ultimecias and Legendary SeeDs going around and around. We need to find a way to kill it, or one day it'll reach out and devour us. Get some sleep while you can Rin. You won't have many more chances."_

* * *

><p>"God, you look beautiful."<p>

_So do you,_ she almost said, but he'd never fall for it. He was a wreck. His clothes were torn, the sword he'd brought with him was a pitted and warped ruin and he looked like he'd rolled through a dirty sandpit. Which he had, in a way. For all that though there was no-one else in the world she'd rather see than him right now. As quietly as she could she leaned down over his bed and ran a hand lightly over his face. He _felt_ real. After spending weeks in the empty desert, staring up at the stars and speaking with the ghosts of ages past she could use a dose of reality. The Sorceress had thankfully withdrawn from her mind and left her alone with him.

_I knew you'd come._

"…Rin?"

His voice was barely a whisper and she had to almost lay down next to his mouth to hear him. She smiled. "Heya."

He sounded thin and washed-out. "If you wanted a holiday you should have just asked."

She felt like crying. She knew that outside of the small private tent, back in the world there was a war brewing between and over unfathomable power, with her friends and comrades locked up in both sides and neither. A man she thought of as her brother risking his life inside an enemy city, alongside people that had once been here enemy but were now fighting tooth-and-nail to help her. Another, who she had never called a friend but had always respected now a vengeful wraith that haunted the grassy plains. A woman she loved like an older sister twisted and shaped into something hateful, by a man that would tear down the world. Would paint over the entire canvass and replace it with his own idealised picture. All of them victims, trapped by their births or pasts into the roles they occupied now. And finally herself and her ghost, a living symbol of the power they fought for and what that power could do. She wanted to just stay in the tent. Tell everyone to figure out their own problems and let her live her life in peace with her husband. "I missed you." She could feel the tears coming and wiped them away.

He reached up a hand and spoke as she grasped it. "If you'd asked me, back in Deling, I would have came with you."

"I was afraid you'd leave me."

"Never."

Her knees gave out as she heard the word and she collapsed next to him on the small cot, staring across at him. The thin material sunk in the middle with the extra weight and she was pushed gently towards him by gravity until they touched. "Thank you."

"What are we doing here Rin?"

_We._ "I'll tell you tomorrow. Just…let's just have this night, for now."

They did.

* * *

><p>The morning came, and the wind with it. Centra hurled around it's dust like a gale, but none of that wind touched the encampment that she and her army were in. When it came too close the dust and rocks and weeds would violently veer away, repelled by an invisible wall of force. Some of her followers (<em>not cultist, never that)<em> stood at the edge and brushed their hands against the barrier, feeling the tension on it as on one side the air was calm and less than millimetres away it whirled and howled. Even though outside the continent was locked into a dust-storm, Rinoa and Squall could looked up all the way to the clear blue sky. Like being inside a glass cylinder of peace.

He shook his head in wonder. "You're amazing."

She beamed. "I've really learned a lot." Whether it would be enough what be put to the test soon. They both looked out across the desert. Down below she could hear the barked orders of the older men trying to teach the newer ones how to sight and felt a familiar nervousness in her gut. In her heart Rinoa would always be a dyed-in-the-wool pacifist. For all her arrogance Xu had been right, like she so often was. All she wanted was to sit everyone down around a table and _sort things out_. But she had looked ahead with the help of her other self and seen that couldn't happen. Had tried to look a little further into the future and seen nothing at all. Or everything.

"So what were you planning on doing now?" Squall asked, breaking her from her self-absorption.

She hadn't said it to any of the dozens of people that had asked the exact same question over the last weeks, but she said it now that finally her other half was here with her. "I'm not sure. I can't-" _I can't ask them to die for me._

He caught her meaning, like she knew he would. "That's what an army is for, Rinoa."

"_He's right,_" her future/alternate/ghost concurred. She had stayed quiet up until now but inserted herself into the conversation. _"Rinoa my dear you can spend all your life in this desert and call it 'getting ready' but eventually we _must_ move."_

She knew both of them were right but she still hesitated. She could pick out individuals from up here, just by the presence their souls gave off. There was a young boy that had lost his father to the Galbadian military in the Second War, now listening with absolute concentration as one of the veterans taught the basics of battlefield first aid. Rinoa had seen the anger in his eyes when he had first arrived at the camp, now replaced with something a little less harsh, but every bit as determined. There an older woman went by those too sick to get their own food. Another just in the distance embracing his lover he had met right here in the Centran desert. She knew if she went to face the false Sorceress (_and her knight)_ some of them wouldn't be coming back alive. "They're a part of me," she whispered.

Squall sat down on the dusty rock of the plateau. The clothes he had came in ha been a tattered ruin, and now he looked like any other refugee or True Faithful that had came seeking her out. But to her he would always shine through whatever dirty rag he wore. "I met her, you know. Back in Timber."

Rinoa nodded. She knew. Had seen it, with her power. She had looked down on the fight and found the two of them, a proud blue soul she would know anywhere, but twisted now, wrapped up and entangled with something red and sharp. With her something dirty and white, and as Rinoa's mind had stared down at the fakes the false Sorceress had turned and _looked up at her_. She'd withdrawn quickly, as soon as she'd seen Squall run safely away from the pair. When she'd realised who and what they were she'd been terrified and pitiful and heartbroken all at once. "That's it, too. I don't want to kill her."

Her husband sighed. "Me neither." He looked up at her. "We'll find a way to get her back, I promise."

Rinoa thought again about that maelstrom of red and blue that seethed around her friend's soul. "I don't know how," she whispered sadly, and stood. She felt whipping across her face and looked up to feel the invisible borders of the shield shaking along with her mood, and she calmed herself as best she could lest the dust-storm outside break in. "I'm just so confused."

"_Don't lie to yourself Rinoa. You know what you have to do. You just have to go and _do it."

She knew that she was right. There was nothing else she could think of

"Hyne knows Rin I know this is hard for you." She felt strong arms enfolding her from behind and leaned back into the embrace of her husband.

"I just want to stay here," she whispered into his arms. "Just let the world fall apart outside and stay in here with you. I could do it. Keep us safe, make the grass grow again. Make Centra a garden, just for us."

"And everyone outside? Selphie and Irvine and Matron and the others? All those people in Esthar and Dollet and Deling? _Timber?_ I don't think you could Rin. Either of us."

She smiled. "Of course not."

" _Of course not. You have to- wait."_

She frowned. "What?"

"_There's...can't you feel…?"_

Rinoa brushed against the edges of her cylindrical world with her power. "I don't…wait." She felt it. Like the rumble of an engine in a stationary vehicle, vibrating the chasis. It felt like the world was fuzzy at the

edges. "I can feel it. I-"

Squall frowned. "Rin

oa? What's wrong?"

She shook her head as the feeling became stronger, felt like

her head would sha

ke itself apart. "This isn't…oh God.

I know what

this

i

s."


	33. Time Compression

_-of _

_my head,_

_my powers sunk into its found_

_ation until it had became a part of me. I live in a _

_castle of memories, the times past written in its stones _

_and ornaments. My memory of the last time we spoke, not far in the past. It _

_lays on the surface of my mind like a barbed rose, easy to reach down and see but painful to pick up and examine. Yet I find that I must. "_Damn war-"

Seifer muttered. His opinion on the politicians and 'rulers' that had crawled out of the woodwork after theSecond -_ it settles back into its default state of nothing. Once I tried to make that impact, to shake the world free of the unchanging state it had fallen into, but no matter how I raged I couldn't move it from the valley it had rolled into. In the end I wasn't strong enough, all my struggles and sacrifices for naught. All that remains for me now is the long wait for entropy to claim its throne. I will be waiting a long months years it feels as though the castle itself is slowly sucking the energy out of me, smothering my will to achieve in a thick blanket _his dossier-filled subconscious. "Miss Jordin. Thank you for the welcome." She didn't man coughed and raised a hand, a welcoming smile on his face. "The Duchess has asked the pleasure of the SeeD guests travelling through her-""The _duchess_-" the way Xu said it made sure the working?"Quistis leaned back in the soft leather until she could look up into Xu's eyes. "Fujin's reports on the reconstruction. Time to head out, now that the B-Garden ceremony's over.""You sure you're ready to leave so soon?"She smiled at the inherent question in her subordinate's voice. "Nida will do a remember." He grinned. "See, I'm a good listener."Her look and sigh off exasperation told him what she thought of his listening skills. "Whether you could _remember_ – although sometimes I wonder whether you can remember past yesterday – what you were like when _you_ were a kid."Squall looked back down at the collection of boys and girls below, knowing Rinoa would know he was merely thinking and not ignoring her. They were enraptured as the blonde woman talked at them, eyes fixing on each of them in turn, her warm voice seeming as if she were speaking to you and you alone. He'd been down there one year and he knew the effect it had. "Mostly I remember not talking much."Rinoa knew he meant the orphanage. They'd talked about it at length. "And before that?"He shrugged. "Nothing, of course.""Parents?"cook who someone had handed a rifle and told to fetch the SeeD. His voice was barely comprehensible under his grief, the thick accent coming through like fog in his mouth. "You askin' me that you vicious bitch? _JUST GET MOVING!_"The doors of the throne-room stood before her, and she wondered if she would leave alive. "We fucked up real bad."To both their surprises, it was Zell who had spoken. Nida had finished retching up what little his stomach contained into the sea and now the pair of SeeDs stood looking grimly at the sky, feeling not a little useless. - and see two small children building a snowman in the middle of the street as amused Esthar checkpoint guards looked on, the lights on their armour casting a blue light that made the snow shimmer in the midday sun. He could hear laughter - start walking in that direction. Find Rinoa and drag her away into the heart of the city that was finding some small measure of peace and _count of the worlds I enter. I had thought that my own world was near the surface but that isn't the case. I go through dozens of worlds and their occupants; women mad from loneliness. Women who dragged others into their prisons with them when they fell. Women who have found peace in this layered set of worlds only want me gone. I travel up through them all, the sky above growing lighter and more vivid with every barrier broken through. Finally I gasp for air on the shores of one more beach and I can feel something is different. I shiver uncontrollably but it isn't from bone-deep and the poor creatures stand no chance. I raise a hand and before I can think it is done. Where there was sand and the dying guardian force there is now a blazing pyre, sand fusing into glass where my magic burns away the flesh and bones and soul of the creature and I send it to whatever heaven awaits such a being."We should go back." Aimsland. _Her routine had taken her into the rose gardens again, and it there she sat reading some ancient book she barely bothered to remember the title of – words to keep her mind active and nothing else – when the quiet and - that had been gathering over mind and Quistis looked up in surprise as the girlish laughter sounded through the garden, and before she could tell herself to pause and wait she was up from the bench, her book discarded, and walking through the garden in search of its origin. Even within the cavernous and confusing layout of the rose gardens she did not have to search for girl and the boy were playing on the spacious lawn at the centre of the garden, surrounded by rose bushes that covered the area on"_-standing here before a grieving populace as they mourn the loss of their brave leader. -_ face appeared on the screen. The smile was missing, and the eyes were downcast and mournful, but something of Leonard Nerva's nature seemed to shine through the television at them. As if he knew they were watching, and the whole show was for their benefit._ teenagers who believed that they were masters of stealth, their relationship was obvious to everyone and neither of them realised it. When Quistis had finally worked up the nerve to tell someone, Squall's answer had been a simple _about time. _Rinoa had just smiled and laughed. Only Irvine had been a little nervous, and Quistis suspected that was more to do with his embarrassment at hitting on her all those years ago rather than any deep-seated phobias. After that their relationship had progressed quickly. Xu still had Mr Seagill, I think there's something happening you want to know about. _He'd watched it and done his own share of reacting then, alone, where nobody else could see how nervous or afraid he looked. He was Esthar's rock, but at that moment looking at the images of that burning broken town and the people caught in it, and the people who had caused it, he could have been made of sand. "It's not a joke." As gently as he could he pushed past Irvine and turned the screen off. It slid away as he turned to the others. "This is…this _was_ Timber, yesterday. Dollet forces attacked overland. They burned the militias to rubble and installed their own puppet government." He didn't bother to go on. They've all read the textbooks, they Rinoa."No.""Comm-"_ "No. _"You're quite sure?""Ask me again, I dare you.""Enough. I'll deal with it. Contact our lone knifeman and get him to move. We're starting tonight." "No, I want absolute assurances when dealing with these people. We lost the last Archangel to them, we will not lose the next. Whatever argument you have with him will keep until after the Resurrection.""And can I…?""Whatever's left of her is up to you."he'd caught Zell as the teenage martial-artist had come back from their encounter. _Forget the big lunk, she's the dangerous one_, he'd said as he limped off to the infirmary. Much. Fire was a premium back home – _so Trabia is 'home' now eh? –_ and he intended to enjoy the warmth while it lasted. He'd even gotten to take his coat off and the chair he lay in was so comfortable he could have gladly sunk within trace into glanced over at Irvine. "No," she said, her words barely carrying across the room to the man. "You?"Irvine shrugged. "I was brought up Galbadian, before the war. Only Sorceresses we ever saw were in" Commander Leonhart. Miss Tyynes." Not a question. The Estharian soldier's professionalism and competency radiated out of him like a rock, and for a moment Squall felt just a little small before the man. He looked old enough - no escape from their continent had left a generation stilted and introverted. For all the awe and envy the rest of the world gave to Esthar Squall knew that the technological utopia had scars that might never be healed. The old soldier before him talking - things that would have turned Squall's blood to water. He turned back to the SeeDs, _"YOU TOOK MY LIFE FROM ME!"_ He heard the voice of the young woman again, an excitement contrasting like nails against the fury in Quistis' voice. It was coming from _above-_ "I see him!" He looked up and he almost lost it then, almost just stopped from shock and stood there while the family he had fought and died with bore down on him with killing intent. The younger one flew above him on wings of light, tendrils of dirty-white energy reaching out "_One_ night," the brunette put down the now-empty container and shrugged. "Well, Esthar is gonna have to deal with the fallout of a few - this either. Who knows, maybe some of them will stay if Laguna will allow it. Make a new life in the deadly demon-city of technology.""I heard that," the president of Esthar said walking into the room and surveying the damage. "Yeesh, you kids." He sat down next to Squall and drew a glass of something unidentifiable from the nearest bottle. "The deadly demon-city of technology and debauchery-""Knew I forgot something."_ "I'm going to tell you something, something I've wanted to tell you ever since we met inside that stupid lamp." _"What?"_ "I hate SeeDs." _"Wow. We would never have guessed."Squall tried to look every way at once as the shadows swarmed - backs and a black mass of faceless demons in front of them, a circle that could snap shut and overwhelm them in a moment if the man in front of them commanded it. If he even was a man._ "You're so god damn stubborn. Even killing one of you was such a chore."_ Squall's hands tightened around his gunblade and Diablos' ruined mouth twisted in what could have been a sneer. _"At least I made sure that one wasn't going to bother anyone anymore, unless you've got some magic that can cure being gutted like a fish." _"What do you want?" Laguna asked, and Squall could hear the violence in the old man's voice just aching to burst forth._ "_Surrendered?_" The woman shrugged. "What could they do? They're a farming village for Hyne's sake. But he went there and made them bow their knee and swear loyalty and apparently that was enough. We know because one of them came to Dollet." At first Squall thought he had misheard, "A human, he let a human go?" Almas nodded. "Came up to the city gates and we let him in. He argued we should do the same as Winhill did. Tried to argue Diablos' case, if you can believe that." She shook her head. "Same crap as Galbadia used to feed us, except Diablos didn't even care about trying to wrap it up in crap about solidarity or anti-Esthar speeches. Kneel or die is the message Diablo is putting out. I think the poor man had managed to convince himself it was the best way." "How did the duchess take it?" "Not well." "There's nothing to turn off. Take a closer look," the voice replied calmly. It sounded like nothing at all. Squall raised a hand against the glare and turned to examine the bright light _out of London and into the windows of the Sea of Estray, whose wild and untamed practitioners rub their hands in glee at the misfortune of the stuffy and patronising usurpers of the title of Mage's Association. It runs through unknown pathways and invisible doors and reaches the concealed libraries of Atlas, who disregard it in favour of omens and portents that are more important than the backbiting Squall didn't could barely remember what he had said. It made his skin crawl to see himself on the screen up there. _"We regret them all. Nobody more than me - than all of us who were there – wishes none of this had happened." _The pretty Galbadian reporter nodded sombrely and continued. _"A terrible thing to happen, and so soon after the end of the last conflict,"_ she said sadly. Some came from privilege and royalty, kings and queens of Azeroth. Others came from the dust and toil of unnamed peasantry. Some of them went kicking and screaming as they were dragged towards gallows or guillotines, some went gladly as a final escape away from their poisoned or slashed or burned bodies. In fits of insanity or despair or visions of a time to come some sought it out on mad quests, and some in their fear or determination did anything they could to escape from its clutches. Some found temporarily escapes and their stories went on, but always eventually the last page would catch them up and their end would be more "The core. Destroy it. Annihilate them all." She looked back at the SeeDs and laughed as a great joy rose up in her. If this was her last battle so be it. But she would tear the soul out of the Garden as she fell."Come, we die together."have to repair Garden of course. Yeesh but Squall made a mess of it while we were gone. We'll have to do something about Galbadia but I think Laguna can handle that on his own, he knows more about that kind of thing than us-"Selphie…""-Have to have a celebration obviously. We probably can't do it here if the quad is underwater but _I_ think that Trabia's big enough for all us to fit in, and even then Levvy can do something about all the water-""Selpy, did we come back here just to die?"He felt the slap before he'd finished the sentence."Don't you _dare_ give up now Irvine Kinneas!" Selphie shouted at him. "We've came this far together. We've lived through Deling City, missile attacks, base explosions, _the end of time_, and we're gonna live through this!"Irvine rubbed his face and looked up at Selphie. "You're a lot tougher than me you know. Always were."Selphie blushed a little but held his gaze. "Well one of us _should_ be," she shot back. She stood from the huge chamber. It had more than a passing feeling to a tomb. He felt like he was exhuming a body. "Did we win?""Of course."Quistis' smiled in pleasure. "Look after Squall okay. Hyne knows what…screw-ups he'll make if we're not there."Rinoa laughed with tears in her eyes as she gripped Quistis' hand, as if doing so would stop the flow of life from her friend's body. "Yes! Yes, of course." She wiped the tears away and laughed hopelessly. "Someone has to keep an eye on him."Quistis looked back at Siren. "Do you remember…" Quistis' breath caught in her throat as the blue power finally sparked and died and all that was left was her own smashed body laying there surrounded by blood. "Do you…remember what I asked…in Esthar?" she whispered feebly._ Will you take me there, one day? _Siren nodded desperately as Rinoa shouted for help from outside the core, someone, _anyone._ "Yes, _yes!_ Just hold on a little longer okay, we can-"Then…let's go there. Together."Siren looked back at Rinoa with tears in her eyes and the young Sorceress could do nothing but shake her head and cry. Siren looked back into Quistis eyes and nodded once, slowly. _Fuck Bahamut and his laws,_ she thought, and reached inside herself for her own long-disused power to find the way back to her home."Rin," Quistis mouthed quietly. She seemed to shimmer in the 's own voice was no louder. "Yes?""You were never…my relative," Quistis said with a radiant smile as she and Siren begin to fade out of view and into nothing. "But I'm glad you were…

my sister." Standing there now in the same room, if things turned out badly again, somehow, Irvine wasn't sure how things would go coughed nervously and tried to push the thoughts from his head. "So what's your view on

all this anyway? You believe all this crazy stuff?" The two were sat – well, _one_ sat – in the warn room, the

fireplace blazing with heat as outside the snow continued to fall. He knew

that the others were outside in it but somehow

he couldn't find it within

himself to

care


	34. Rinoa Leonhart

She collapsed to the ground as the cacophony subsided, aftershocks like an earthquake still rumbling though her and sending strange memories and feelings into and out of her head. She didn't who she was. She loved a man she had never met. She had a little brother who-

"_GET AHOLD OF YOURSELF!"_

She felt strong hands lifting her up and Squall's voice in her other ear, even as her future self screamed inside her head.

"Rin, Rin? Are you okay?"

Time un-knotted itself, flowed apart again into the Then, the Now and the To Be. The Never Had Been faded away into nonexistence. The world came back into focus and she could hear crying and shouting down below her. The wind threw sand and dust across her face as her shield around the camp came down. She tried to bring it back up but the Power whipped around inside her and she recoiled away from it.

_My God, my God they tried it. They actually tried it._ She didn't know whether the thoughts were her own or the sound of the ghost inside her.

"Time Compression."

Rinoa took a deep breath and took _real_ air into her lungs. "It's…it's over now." She gently felt around and sat down on the ground, to try and stop it from rolling underneath her.

"_They failed. They failed Rin. She wasn't strong enough. But they'll try again and again until they get it right."_

She was right and Rinoa knew it. If Squall had heard it he would have agreed. She looked down on the camp and thought _I should be there._ She tried to stand again but her legs wouldn't move and she heard the sound of scuffling shoes behind her.

"Is this okay! Is she alright?"

Squall turned to the young panicked man and nodded. "What's it like down there?"

Even if he hadn't been known around the camp, the tone of command in his voice came through clean in his words. "Get the wounded into a tent and make sure they're seen to." He took a breath, glanced at Rinoa who nodded back. She knew it was time. "Assemble everyone that can – _is willing_ – to fight and wait until we're ready."

"Ready to what sir?" Rinoa couldn't help but smile. Squall had known the man for seconds and already had him moving to his command. He might doubt himself and question himself and wonder whether he was the right man for the job, but underneath it all Squall Leonhart was a hero.

"Go to back to Dollet and stop the fake Sorceress before she can do this again." The man ran back down to the camp and Squall turned back to Rin, sitting down next to her. "I'm sorry. I know you didn't want this."

Rinoa sighed and stared up at the sky. Instead of the clear blue air of the Centran night the sand had broken through her shield and now all she could see was dust. "We don't always get the things we want." The leaned in and kissed him deeply, and for that one minute she lost herself in him. Finally she drew back and stood. Already she could see men and women coming together on the plain below, waiting. For her.

"it's time to go, Rinoa."

"_It's time to go, Rinoa."_

She nodded. She was looking down at the dusty plains but all she could see in her mind was the ocean, and the city on its edge. She imagined she could see people there, staring out across the water and looking at her. A sorceress and her knight, staring out across the ocean towards a Sorceress and her Knight. She could see those gray and blue eyes staring back at her. "Don't leave me behind this time, alright?"

Her husband gripped her hand and nodded. She met his eyes and in them she could see all the promises they had made together on their wedding day, and all the promises they had made as a Sorceress and Knight. She'd come out here to find out who she was. Well she knew now. "You think you can keep up with me?" she asked softly.

"Always."

The couple turned, and made their preparations for war.


	35. Imalia Aimsland

"I'm sorry. I just…I'm _sorry."_

Like a friend comforting someone sick outside a bar Imalia patted the young girl on the back as around them the world slotted itself back into place like a smashed jigsaw puzzle put back together by invisible hands. She could still feel the false memories jangling in her skull as they faded away. Even though she _knew_ who she was she still felt off-put as they melted away, visions of other lives she had never led and under them a disappointment and longing over something she couldn't quite describe. As if in the midst of all that chaos she had been able to glimpse the perfect world that her brother described, a smiling figure staring at her with love. But even as she tried to focus on it, grab it and hold it tight, it slipped away and she was left back in the world. The angel who had tried to make paradise real retched and moaned in pain on the floor, those off-white wings shimmering as they faded away, replaced by the cold wind of the roof they stood on. "It's alright, it's alright," she repeated softly. She hoisted Almas up as gently as she dared and began to walk.

She carried the half-unconscious girl down the stairs into the palace. Even as spring came around to their part of the world, winter tried to hang on tenaciously and its icy fingers still covered the town. Servants and those Faithful permitted into the inner areas moved out of their way hurriedly as she carried the exhausted Sorceress back to her rooms. On the way they passed people collapsed in the halls of crying as they stared at nothing, those who had looked into Time Compression and found themselves in places they hadn't wanted to be torn from, and now cried over what they had lost. In the distance she could hear faint cries, and wondered what those people had seen. Maybe loved ones lost years ago, or themselves living better lives than they were here. One of the nameless staff stood out from the others, a black shadow passing by soundlessly, and she recognised it instantly. _He_ had better reason than most to be affected, and yet here he was still standing, if not exactly unscathed. "Kettil."

The man seemed to be dazed and not a little confused. He stopped dead in his tracks at the sound of her voice and it seemed to take him an age to recognise who was calling him. "Ms…Aimsland?" He tried to stand to something resembling an upright stance but halfway through had to grab onto the wall for support. "I…I'm sorry. It's just…I saw…"

She wanted to walk over to the man and ask him what was wrong but she had her hands full, literally, and had to settle for calling the closest servant to see to the man. She knew his story, why he followed her brother so loyally. What had happened to him had been a travesty, and she wondered how close the man had come in the abortive attempt at Time Compression to being in _his_ perfect world. She knew what it was like to have something snatched away from her, and then come so close to having it again. At least in _her_ case she had gotten back what she had lost. "Look after him," she told the attentive young woman as they each led their invalids away.

"Wasn't strong enough…" Almas whispered as Imalia set her down gently on the bed. The room was in a tower built on a small outcropping, with a small rose garden outside and only one door connecting it to the palace-proper. Nobody could go in or out without passing through that garden. "It's fine, it's fine," she whispered as she shut the door behind her. "Let her sleep. No visitors," she said to the guards, her tone leaving no room for disagreement. One time she had passed by the doorway and found the rose garden filled with penitent Faithful, all clamouring around Almas with some question or petition or plea. Almas had been too soft-hearted to send them away, and she had looked exhausted. Imalia had fixed that soon enough. Now the list of people that could enter the garden could be counted on her hand. She was going to have words with one of them now.

Taking a breath to calm her irritation and closing her eyes, her power reached out and searched the palace for its twin. It was difficult. When she had first awoken into her real life she had asked why Morden hadn't placed himself as Almas' knight, and he had told her and shown her. She was shocked at how little of the power he inherited. As if some sleight of fate's hand had skipped over the firstborn and deposited the magic into the next-inline. Whatever the reason her own Blue power burned like a furnace inside her soul. In Morden's it was merely a dull ember that flickered occasionally. She could twist and bend nothingness and energy until it cut and burned and tore. The best he could do was picking up the occasional stray thought. She reached into and through the walls of the castle and found the tiny spark deep in the library. With a sigh she set off after it.

* * *

><p>"What were you thinking?"<p>

He was sat reading when the doors opened, but she knew he had been pacing. The mote of his soul had jittered back and forth as she had approached it, pacing the length of the room. He looked up and smiled at her, but she knew he was doing it for the benefit of the guards that were looking in on them. She turned. "Leave us."

They did so, and Morden seemed to slump in his seat even before the door had entirely shut. "I know, I know," he began placating, but she wasn't going to be put off.

"She's not ready yet. Not yet and _not_ after the effort we went to in Timber. What were you _thinking?"_

All of the emotion he kept battened down out in public he let out here, when it was just the two of them or him alone. The confident and smiling and all-knowing Morden Aimsland was replaced with something just that little less confident. He reminded her of someone, although she couldn't think who. Another echo from a false life. She had chased most of them down and expunged them, but some hung on tenaciously. There was a name there somewhere in her head, and she couldn't destroy it no matter how hard she tried. _Xu._ Who was it? She didn't know. Or, right now, care.

"I had hoped…"

She sat down across from him. "I know what you hoped, but we were _agreed_ on this. She's young and she's still trying to get to grips with her own power. You _know_ this." She poked him in the forehead lightly. "Don't go getting ahead of yourself, you'll trip us both up."

He nodded. For a second he looked hesitant, as if trying to decide something. Then; "Did you see anything?"

It took her a heartbeat to realise what he meant. Inside the Time Compression. "I saw everything. Everything and nothing." It had been like a deluge flowing through her mind. Like she had been standing at the crossroads of all existence as every event and word and thought had flowed past her. Even as other lives and worlds had forced themselves through her mind she could pick out nothing coherent, like waking up and not being able to remember your dreams. "You?"

"I thought I saw them for a second." He shook his head and when he spoke she could hear the longing in his voice. "Just for a second."

The memories she had of her parents were blurred things, like a movie viewed through frosted glass. When she had been brought up coughing and exhausted from the white cell she had been re-born in, Morden had tried to share what memories of them he had, to use their power to give her some of his past. It had worked, but even then all she had received of her own real family were some blurred images and muffled words. Either Morden himself hadn't been able to recall them too well or the process simply hadn't worked with his limited power, because she still couldn't see those images clearly. She had received the feelings _behind_ them though, loud and clear. What had done to him and their parents, how they had been captured and used. How he'd came so close to them again in Ultimecia's aborted Time Compression but been dragged back to reality as his goddess had died. Who had been responsible. Those feelings were crystal-clear to them both.

The siblings sat there in silence, Imalia staring at her brother as he brooded on whatever it was he had seen inside the flowing timeless universe of Almas' power. No sound got through the heavy stone walls into the room and the silence in the library was almost stifling. Finally she couldn't take it anymore. Every since meeting Leonhart in Timber the need to hunt down and make the SeeDs account for their crime was like an engine whirling inside her with an infinite fuel source. The need to go out there and find them and _do harm._ To finally erase or bury or put to rest the paper woman the world had called Quistis Trepe. She stood. "I'm going out."

He only seemed to half-hear the words. "Hmm?"

"Dincht and his cronies are still making noise in the city. I'm going to dispose of these irritants once and for all." She reached across the table and took his hand. Smiled. "Don't worry. It'll all be over soon, I promise." She let go. "Just…have a little patience. You've waited decades, you can wait a few weeks more." _Or months, or years._ She didn't know how long it would take Alma to fully embrace and understand the Sorcery inside her. She hoped it wouldn't be much longer, or that in the meantime Morden's impatience and longing wouldn't overrule his caution or common sense.

She passed a guard on the way out of the room. "Assemble a group; everyone you've had hunting down the SeeD brats. I want to know everything they know."

The soldier bowed, the white armband shifting on his arm. "Yes, Lady. Their orders?"

"Come armed. We're going hunting."

"Certainly. I-" The man gasped and went to one knee, an Imalia was already turning in exasperation as she knew what he had seen.

"You're meant to be sleeping," she said sternly.

"I've had enough sleep," Almas said as she adjusted her clothing. She'd thrown off the blackened and frayed uniform she had dressed in when she had been a member of the Duchess' guard. Now she was dressed more like Imalia herself. A jacketed gray ensemble that fell somewhere between military officer and religious garb.

_Or a sacrificial maiden._ "I wish you'd listen when I ask you to do things." The look she gave her wasn't quite angry, and Almas stared back with defiance. "I don't want you in danger."

"_You're_ always putting yourself in danger. It doesn't…I should be there with you at least. Kettil told me a soldier should face his own enemies."

It was true, and in the way of all wise older women dealing with stubborn young girls she ignored it. "You're not a soldier, Almas. You're a Sorceress, and I'm your Knight, it's my job to keep you safe and destroy your enemies _for you."_ She'd read the books in the library, Sorceresses and Knights riding out together. They'd tried it in Timber and she hadn't been disappointed in the skill the girl showed with her abilities. Even so there was something...wild...she didn't trust about that power. She wondered how much control Almas really had over it. They had only known each other for a few weeks but either she was a softer touch than she thought or Morden had been right about their connection, because Imalia felt a protectiveness towards her that wavered between a watchful eye to occasional nervousness if she wasn't nearby. _Like a daughter_, Kettil had commented once with a slight smile, the closest the man ever came to laughing.

* * *

><p>"<em>Im…Imalia?"<em>

_She looked around as the quiet voice echoed through the empty hall. "Hello?"_ Is she talking to me?

_The young woman edged around the door nervously and stood there, a look of nervous happiness on her face as if she didn't know whether it was okay to smile. "I'm Almas Jordin. Did Mr…did Morden tell you about me?"_

_Even the mere sound of the name sends a small current through her. When she had first awoken she had clung to his name like an anchor against the tides of amnesia and he had held her and not let go. She was lucky to have had him, everything he had done for her. The first thing she had asked after her name had been for her past, and he had provided it in spades. In books and his own words and in _memories_, taken from his mind and deposited into her own. Still though she felt like she was moving through a world of shadows; things she passed and almost recognised, people who passed her either with deference, hatred or polite pity. She was a character dropped into a play halfway through the last act with no script or queue, and everyone was waiting for her next line. Small wonder she spent so much time in her room. She had few visitors. "He might have mentioned something." She searched her memory, what little she had of it. The name Jordin rang a bell but there was nothing to go with it, just a name on a piece of paper torn out of a missing book. "Can I help you?"_

_She walked a little further into the room, in halting steps like she afraid to get closer but felt compelled to do so. "It would be easier if I…umm…watch." And before Imalia could react she reached out a hand, and grabbed it._

_It was like something grabbed hold of her soul and _pulled._ She had to fight with everything she had to stay conscious as something white and _hot_ rushed into her and wrapped itself around her heart. She tried to wrench her hand out of Almas' grasp but the girl was already letting go. She coughed as the world began to stop spinning. "What in…what _was_ that!" _

"_She's a Sorceress, sister." Morden strode into the room like he owned it, and sat down on the bed next to her. "You share a bond, you and her. A bond that makes you strong, stronger than anyone."_

_She hadn't felt strong. She felt drained. She just stayed quiet as Morden began to talk. About age-old dynasties and conquering heroes, and kings and queens and goddesses. About the nature of time and power, and a destiny that had snatched away from them. He talked about the people that had taken his destiny, the shining destiny of the world, and smashed it against the rocks. Through all this she found a word and latched onto it. "I'm a knight?"_

"_All Sorceresses have Knights."_

_She didn't quite know how she felt about that. She looked up at the woman – barely older than a girl – standing in the room looking between them both and smiling nervously. There was no sign of the power that Morden talked about. Only that soul-sucking void that had reached into her. "It's a little much to take in. On top of…on top of everything." Too many new words clashed in her mind, with feelings behind them. She loved a brother she hadn't known until days ago, missed a family she would never meet. Felt a surge of protectiveness towards the other young woman that scared her, and above and beyond all that a dull ember of hatred for a people who called themselves SeeDs._

"_It was known, since the day I-" he hesitated, and for a second the smile on his face cracked just a little "- since the day you were born." Her brother turned to leave. "I'm sorry if I can't stay but I have a lot of work ahead of us. You two should talk without me." He left as quickly as he had entered, and she felt a stab of annoyance at him._

_Almas stared after him and then turned back to her. "He really is. Busy."_

"_I know." She felt a mild irritation that he hadn't thought to include her, and resolved herself to getting onto her feet as quickly as possible. She was supposed to be strong, was she? Then she had better there quickly. She looked across the room at the silent creature, who stared back nervously like a puppy seeking approval. For a moment she wavered between treating her like a servant or a comrade. Instead she settled on honesty. "I'm sorry, it's a confusing time for me right now. I have…I'm still getting over what happened to me. I just need a little time to adjust." Almas nodded eagerly. "We're going to be working together a lot, apparently. So let's start from the beginning." She reached out a hand and said the words for the first time, to see how they felt in her mouth. "My name's Imalia Aimsland. Nice to meet you."_

_They felt right._

* * *

><p>"Where are you going?"<p>

She turned up the collar of the greatcoat against the sea-air. The breeze had picked up in recent days and she wondered whether a storm was coming. "Just out into the town."_ To survey the damage._ Even though she didn't say the words Almas seemed to pick up on it and didn't ask to go with her. For all her power the girl didn't have as strong a stomach as her Knight.

The path outside the palace was deserted as she strode down towards the city-proper. Usually thronged with pilgrims or civilians going home at the end of the day, today it was empty. She cocked an ear out but heard nothing, not even down the hill. She didn't bother to turn, knowing she would be heard and obeyed; "Tell my brother I've gone to take care of his mess."

Down below the city seemed to be at a standstill. Meals left un-eaten on café tables as people had rushed out without eating (_or paying, probably)_, businesses that she'd passed by stood unoccupied. Some had been looted. Not that everyone had left. As she walked she heard grunting noises and turned the corner to see a small boy, barely old enough to be in school, dragging something heavy behind him as he made his way slowly and painfully down the slope towards the town. She only took a moment to realise what it was, and she rushed over and bent down next to him. "Hey." He didn't seem to hear her, just kept on pulling the unconscious or worse body of the man. She placed himself in her way and only when his back hit her did he stop and look around. "Are you okay?" She cursed herself and started again. "Do you need any help?"

The boy gaped for a second, and tears formed in his eyes as he gabbled words between sobs. She caught the most important ones though. Dad. Sick. Hospital. The man must have been a local dockworker, and the boy was exhausting himself dragging him. Without waiting for permission she got down on her knees and hauled as hard as she dared, and dragged the man up until he leaned against her. She felt something give way and before he could fall down she _pushed_ from within herself. The son of the man watched mouth agape as a pale blue light surrounded the pretty lady and his dad, and she hauled the massive man up easily. "Let's go."

She passed others on the way. Some lay in the street where they had fallen, others were staggering around in a sightless daze as if looking for something lost. Once or twice she heard screaming fights coming from inside houses as people looked around and didn't recognise the people they lived with. The boy trailed behind her but any attempt she made to talk with him was met with stony silence. The small minority of those truly affected by the seconds-long Compression were helped out of burning homes or gently led and taken care of by those who had been spared the worst of it. Even then she saw far too many people with that same expression in their eyes; they had looked into that maelstrom of worlds and time and seen something they had been unable or unwilling to cope with, and it had broken them. When they finally came to the hospital the doors slid open to reveal a packed waiting room. When she finally managed to catch the eyes of a nurse she dropped off the man and boy and backed away. The smell of illness and vomit combined with the tang of antiseptics and sickly-sweet drugs assaulted her like a gas, and she found herself back outside, gulping down fresh air.

_God damn you brother. You should have waited._

* * *

><p>"<em>Time Compression?" The words shifted inside her, stirring up a feeling she couldn't quite pin down. She just sat as her brother paced up and down the balcony talking at length. She still had some trouble, distinguishing between her own feelings and the memories he had given to her, to replace the ones she had lost. Still, they felt real. It was anticipation.<em>

"_A better world than this. That's what our power is for, that's the thing we were born to create. Somewhere free of the muck and dirt and pain of this place." He looked out over the city and his eyes were wide. She smiled. He always did this without realising it, the passion he put into his speeches. It was why the Faithful below followed him, how he had built his army._

"_How?" _Give me details. _Her brother was a dreamer, but you needed to have your feet on the ground to have your head in the clouds._

_He smiled at her and Almas, who shifted beside her. Unless one of them was needed they were rarely apart. Kettil had taken her away soon after she had fully recovered from her long dark sleep and explained a few things to her. Where she had come from, how she had come to be. After hearing the whole story she had no problems with what Morden had asked of her. They'd spent days just talking. There were huge gaps in her knowledge, from the time she had been asleep and trapped as Quistis Trepe, and the young woman's own personality was stunted and ill-formed from being used as a mute weapon by that rotten Nerva man. "When the time is right you'll know, sister."_

When you're both stronger_, he didn't say. Imalia didn't mind this. There was a lot to do here. A town to keep running and a list of names to dispose of, some of them far, far away. Let it take time. She wanted to stand over the ruins of Balamb Garden that had taken her life from her, all the years she had missed. She wanted to go to Esthar and build a grave to her family. She wanted to tear down Galbadia and replace it with something else. The magic flowed through her, cool and blue and refreshing, and she knew given time enough she could do it. Every day she could feel more of it. Whatever spark had passed over her brother had taken root in her, and was flowering. She wondered how strong she could have been, if her other dead self hadn't spent her life afraid of it, pushing it down. _Such a waste. _"And SeeD?"_

_Morden smiled, but not at her. He was looking out, over the ocean. "Let them come. They tore down our first chance at a perfect world, let them stand outside and stare in at the new one."_

* * *

><p>"Are…are you? Are you the Knight? Can...can you help me?"<p>

She looked around to see a wide-eyed woman staring at her like she had seen a ghost. A quick glance and the white band on her arm told Imalia why. "The doctors are inside." She needed to get away, out of that place filled with the unfortunates.

"Please, help me." The ragged woman grabbed her sleeve and held it like a talisman. "I can still see them. Children. I held them in my arms. Now I can't find them. I can't...I don't know their names anymore. They're here somewhere. I know it. I just-"

Another victim. Either the children had never been real or they were and her true memories had been lost in the shuffle as time moulded together. "I'm sorry, I can't help you."

The woman tugged at her arm and she found herself propelled along. "Please. Just come and help."

She hesitated. She wanted to get back up to the palace. Make sure Almas was okay. Take her foolish brother to task for the misery his impatience had caused. Arrange some real help for the madness taking place down here. _A knight is a guardian._ "Alright. Where."

The woman looked pathetically grateful and Imalia allowed herself to be led away as her mind turned over with random thoughts and plans. Since her rebirth she had immersed herself into everything she could find on the events of the last year. She'd absorbed dozens of papers and interviews and recordings, everything she could find on the situation she had come into being in. Names and personalities flitted through her head as her feet were on autopilot.

_Esthar will move now, they have to. They wanted to let SeeD try and handle us but they can't ignore this. They'll move on Timber first and try to take it back, they already know they can't get their starship above Dollet without losing it. _Almas had proudly told her about the red thing she had brushed against, and she had realised what it was immediately. She had asked Almas to take more…drastic…action if she felt it again, and the Sorceress had gladly agreed._ They'll come overland from Timber, and get SeeD to come from the coast. If only we could find the damn place!_ Balamb Garden was the wildcard she didn't like. Trabia and Galbadia were accounted for but the final academy sat there somewhere on the waves, hidden and unreachable. _If only we could find it!_

"This…this is…we're here."

Imalia looked up at the ruined building and felt a stab of sympathy run through her. The place hadn't been lived in for decades, abandoned and condemned for longer, probably. She put on a brave smile and tried to give a little hope back to the lost woman. "Let's find your children." Even as she the words she felt the lie behind them. She strode through the door. "Now where-"

_SLAM_

She spun just in time to see something shoot down from above hard and fast, and instantly the light was cut off as a massive slab of iron thumped into place between her and the door. She heard the voice of the woman again, but instead of panicked weeping now there was just a single self-satisfied word and a happy chuckle: "_Sucker."_

The windows had already been boarded, and as the light snapped on she saw the guns pointed at her, and the people staring out at her from behind them. For all of that she wasn't worried, not yet. Instead she felt something else. "Well? And you are?" She knew already of course, just looking at them before her, and she felt that familiar anger settle in as she saw the badge and face behind it, flanked by figures she had seen on a dozen pictures and wanted signs. The one-eyed woman and giant kept their guns steady on her, as the blonde spoke. She knew the name that went with the face. Normally with a cocky grin, now it looked dead serious.

"Hey Quisty," Zell Dincht said.


	36. Zell Dincht

It was like seeing your favourite work of art scribbled over with marker-pen. Like someone had taken something precious and defaced it. He'd had thoughts back when he had been young and stupid, like pretty much everyone else. There hadn't been a single man – and some women – in Balamb that hadn't met her and wondered what their chances would have been with her. He hadn't been as…dedicated…to that cause as the Trepes but he had weighed the odds, he'd admit that. Then he'd grown up, and fought with her and laughed and saved the world together with her, and he'd learned who they really were. Quistis had always been the rock of the group. She'd reigned him in when he'd gone too far and helped keep him centred when he needed a little guidance. In return he'd been there when she had needed a helping hand or a kind word. He'd been just a little immature and she had been a patient older sister. Now he looked at that person and nothing of her stared back at him. The women he'd fought beside, the big sister he'd ran to when Seifer had teased him just a little too much, that person was gone. She had been replaced with something hard and dark and cold, and he had no idea how to act towards it.

"Don't call me that."

He had promised himself he would try if he got the chance, try to get her back. But even as he spoke he knew it wasn't going to work. Even though he'd seen the transmission like the rest of the world he had hoped somewhere in his mind that it would be as simple as talking to her. No luck. Maybe Rinoa could have done it, or Squall. But not him. "Quisty I-"

"My name is _Imalia!"_ she screamed back at him, blue sparks flying as she hissed the words at him. He could feel the energy crackling in the air like static.

He risked a glance at Raijin, whose shrug conveyed the big man's words without any sound needed: _Now what do we do?_

They'd taken the chance. Time Compression had swept across them like a wave and when they had broken the surface they knew this was the best time they'd ever have, and they had been right. The plan had worked perfectly, but now that the tiger was in the cage they could see how long and sharp those claws were. Fujin had tried to get around his stubborn request but he had insisted on speaking his mind, hoping that mere words could bring her around, and now he realised he didn't know what exactly to do next. He'd had some vague idea of restraining her down here in the dark, maybe trying to break through this fake thing to the Quisty inside. He hadn't expected…this. "We just want to talk."

"You'll get nothing from me, SeeD," Qui- Imalia snarled.

"It's Zell. My name's Zell, Qusity. You remember, right? We met in Garden, you-"

"I remember I woke up one day from a fake life and learned people like you killed everything I care about." She looked at him with some combination of pity and hate. "God, Dincht. What did you think you were going to do down here? You thought a few little lies would turn me back into your tame mage-girl?" Sparks flew through the air and behind him Zell heard a hiss of pain as one of them hit a man's hand and burned.

"No, Quist- no.-" He didn't know how to go on. "I'd never lie to you."

She sneered. "All you've ever done is lie. I could kill you all here, right now. You couldn't possibly stop me." She looked around at the group, the other resistance members. "I guess if you let an infection lie long enough it'll spread." She raised her voice to the others in the room. They had been all he could gather at such short notice and they stared at her with faces ranging from fear to shock to their own hatred. They didn't look at her and see Quistis Trepe, SeeD and saviour of the world. They saw a sorceress leader that ground them into the dirt and acted like they should be thankful. "I don't know what you've been doing with this man, but put down your weapons now and we'll show a little mercy. You all felt it, what we're trying to do. We'll finish this work, count on it." She met their gazes one by one. "When we're in a new world, what do you think happens to people too stuck in the old one to move on?"

Zell heard indrawn breath but didn't want to look around for fear of what he'd see. He heard a whimper from one of the younger ones, and a snarl from an older one a she told him to keep his gun up. _She hasn't convinced them. Quisty would never have done it like this, never have tried to make them listen because of fear._

"Drop your weapons now or in the Archangel's name I'll kill you all right here and now," Imalia said, and her eyes were flat blue murder.

"She's gonna do it," Raijin said, and shook his head. Either in regret or fear. He spoke one word. "Fu."

The thing wearing his sister's skin smiled like a shark and took one step forward, before Zell reached behind his back and pulled down the mask dangling there. "I'm sorry Quisty."

"You will be," she replied coolly. "When we-"

Zell watched as the bags suspended from the ceiling burst as Fujin's small charges popped them like balloons, and the heavy mist exploded out of them and blanketed the room. Those too slow to get their masks on fell coughing and scrabbling at their throats as the gas forced its way in. The room was chaos as suddenly the tiger broke loose, and the group of resistance members suddenly found themselves blinded. _Hadn't expected this…_ He caught a shape whirr past him almost faster than he could see as Fujin leapt forward, too slow, as the sparks spun and whirled and Imalia – _Quisty! – _turned into a blue outline wrapped in the fog. He took a step back as something cool raced past his head, its passage making the dust particles whip around him, and he smelled something burning. It might have been his hair. "Quisty _please!"_

The blue shape rounded on his voice and Zell flew himself away as he realised she was aiming for his voice in the choking blinding fog. An instant after he did so he heard a scream, as someone slower than him was speared on those blue beams of force. "_My name is Imalia! IMALIA!"_

He wanted to shout something, to try and break through that shell again and see if truly there was anything of his big sister underneath, but before he could step forward a hand wrapped itself around his neck and Raijin dragged him backwards to the door, and escape.

"Sorry Zell, we gotta go!" Raijin said, as he picked up his comrade and hoisted him away from the conflict.

"_I'LL FIND YOU!"_ a sapphire ghost screeched in the fog, and then Zell felt cool air brush against his cheek as Raijin slammed the escape route shut behind them, and light assaulted his senses. As Raijin threw him off his shoulder and the three started running away from the chaos still happening behind them, Zell's thoughts were occupied with a single memory he couldn't shake. An image from after one fight out of thousands, when she had turned to him and idly picked a stray piece of rubble from his shoulder like cleaning lint from a uniform. It was the clearest memory he had of Quistis in his mind, and he wanted to keep it, in case there wouldn't be another.

_Take care of yourself Zell._

* * *

><p>"That was intense."<p>

Zell could have punched him. "Goddamnit Raijin! I-"

Fujin stopped him short before he could go on. "No, correct. What were you going to do Zell? Were you going to reason with her while she was tearing you apart? I remember Quistis Trepe. That was not her."

He wanted to slap her just for the words but he knew she was right. "God damnit god _damnit!_ Did we get _anything_?"

"I wish I could say so. I'm sorry Zell."

Fujin sat down next to him on the back street. They were reasonably safe. Dollet was an old city, honeycombed with alleys and streets that went nowhere and forgotten old buildings. They'd built up their little resistance under the floorboards piece by piece. Not everyone was happy with how things were. There were enough sons that had lost a father to speaking up against the cultists – Zell refused to call them the Faithful – or parents that had lost a child to zealotry to give them eyes across most of the city. They'd been ferrying everything they had to Deling, and from Deling to Esthar. He liked to think it was helping but on dark nights he wondered whether he wasn't just sitting the entire thing out. Today's plan had been their first attempt at real action, and Zell had had to coax Fujin and Nida every step of the way. He wanted to _be doing_ something. The first time he had seen that transmission out of Timber he had known he had to take action or damn himself as a coward. Now he had, and it had been for nothing. "We have to- what's that?"

Raijin looked up, and without saying anything picked Zell back up and threw him into the nearest corner before running into one himself. Fujin was as quick on the uptake. "Inside," she hissed, and took cover just as it arrived.

He couldn't have said exactly what it was. Something light and almost _not there_ seemed to swing across the street where they had been standing. Something in the air became _not right_ for just one moment, and Zell could have swore the space between him and Fujin on the opposite side of the street became thicker somehow. The moment passed, and he risked a glance out from the corner to see something just a little darker than the sky hovering above the city. A web of gray lights, and a small black shape suspended in the middle. He breathed a sigh of relief and a curse at the same time as it moved away.

"We have to go before she looks deeper," Fujin said. Zell nodded back, and the three of them moved off into the under-web of the city like cockroaches trying to evade the exterminator searching for them. She travelled through buildings as they ran, keeping off the air. Sometimes they'd feel something, just little prickes on their heads or the hair of their arms stand up like they were tasting static, but every time they'd pause and hope and the feeling would pass. However good Almas Jordin was she wasn't quite good enough yet, and they made good time through the city back to the bolt-hole they called home.

People looked out for them as they travelled. Some met them on corners and handed over things and moved away quickly. Fujin made them detour several times as they looked in on small enclaves of resistance. Some were there and grateful for the attention, others were burned-out ruins filled with the stench of roasted meat. Zell could feel prickling at the base of his neck and thought about something furious behind them in the maze, trying to catch their scent. If _she_ was hunting them down from the ground he wanted to be elsewhere as fast as possible. Finally one of the nameless men that walked past them dropped something into Fujin's hand that drew her up short. "In here." Without waiting for their acknowledgement she ducked into the first abandoned house they found, and they followed.

"What's wrong?" Zell asked, wondering what the worst could be. When first he and Nida had arrived at Dollet that list had been pretty small. When Fujin and Raijin had arrived and filled the pair in the list had become a little bigger. After Timber it had become a very long list.

Instead she smiled. Just a small one, but to the two men after weeks of nothing but stony-faced resoluteness it was a shock. "A visitor."

"Who?"

She stood and led them back out again. "Almost correct."

It took him a moment, and he almost stopped in his tracks when he realised Fujin's wordplay. "No way."

"Let's go meet her."

* * *

><p>She looked like hell. There was really no other way to describe it. The neat and prim person he remembered had been replaced with something tattered and torn. She'd had to grow her hair out and it hung badly on her shoulders, clearly cut with a blade of some kind where it blocked her view and not at all otherwise. The SeeD uniform he knew her in was now some motley collection of cannibalised leather and cloth. he could hear something clinking when she shifted her weight, and wondered what she was hiding underneath the thin cloak. She had liked small edged weapons, he vaguely remembered.<p>

"Hello Zell," Xu said. Her voice almost broken when she said the words, like she had gone a long period of time without speaking.

"Ms Tyynes," Fujin said, sparing him a need to respond. "You've come a long way."

She blinked and her gaze shifted to the other woman. "Yes." She seemed to realise that more was expected of her. The words came out one by one, like they were being teased from her. "I…I came as soon as I could." Even her tone was different. A far cry from the scathing personality he remembered from Balamb.

Fujin seemed to be considering something for a moment, then spoke. "Everyone out please." The room cleared in an instant as those curious at the arrival in their base of the skittish and dishevelled woman went back to their work. Finally the room was empty apart from Fujin, Raijin, Zell, Nida and the new arrival. Fujin walked up to Xu and put a hand on her shoulder. "Xu, are you alright?"

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine. You need to get some rest."

"I _need_ to find Qu-"

Fujin's voice went from soft to harsh in an instant. "You can't help her when you're a wreck. For Hyne's sake woman what were you doing out there?"

"I-" And she told them. Zell listened with a deepening horror and pity as she told them what she had been doing. She painted a grim picture of a woman transformed by grief and anger into an avenging spirit, wandering across the countryside and doing all the things her rational mind had spent years screaming at her not to do. How eventually the blood-haze had faded and drawn back to reveal bloodstained hands and nobody there to wipe them clean, and a shame so great she didn't know how to turn back. So she had kept going, from one town to the next as one desperate and terrified cultist gave the name of the next one a little higher up the food-chain, until eventually she found herself waking up from emotionless combat to find not scouts and squad-leaders dead at her feet but priests and bishops and commanders. Finally one night she had walked tattered boots into a new town, one of the bigger ones along the plains of Galbadia, and found a bar there with a working screen. She had caught the Faithful's transmission, seen that face looking out at the screen. The woman she loved replaced with something hard and angry and evil. Xu's anger had simply run out, and been replaced with nothing. She had walked - _walked! – _from that nameless town, all the way to Dollet. Simple deduction, combined with the information she remembered Fujin sending to Galbadia and a hard night's search, had brought her the rest of the way from the city gates to the resistance' doorstep.

Zell's mind wandered halfway between wanting to sit down and feel sick, and tell her she'd done a hell of a job. Xu had carved a path across half the continent, taking down Cultist cells as she went. She might have stopped a dozen or more towns falling to them, purely by walking in and killing everyone involved. She'd walked across half a world hunting them down. The scope of what she told him was staggering.

Fujin had no such problem deciding how she felt. With deliberation and all the time in the world, she reached a hand back and slapped Xu across the face, as hard as she could. She spoke calmly but forcefully. "That was for the post you abandoned, and the lives you stole. I can't forgive what you've done, but I don't have the time or the energy to guard you while we fight a war – the _real_ war you left behind."

Raijin shifted nervously. "Fujin…"

She ignored him. "A SeeD commander can help us, but we don't need a rabid dog. Xu Tyynes has friends here, a random killer doesn't. I don't know if I can forgive you for what you've done, but right now we don't have much of a choice. You need to decide who you are before we let you back in."

"I know who I am," the woman whispered, so quietly Zell almost didn't hear.

"Then get some sleep Tyynes, and we'll see what tomorrow brings us."

* * *

><p>"Fujin had a point you know."<p>

They were on the roof, staring out over the city. They'd spend the rest of the day recovering from the failed ambush and mulling over their new recruit. Finally Fujin had declared they would get no work done when everyone was about to crash from their own fatigue poisons, and had sent them to sleep. On a hunch Zell had climbed the stairs to the top floor, and had guessed right. Xu was wrapped in blankets after her old clothing given up as useless rags, and she watched the lit buildings on the mountain with endless patience. He watched in silence as she stared out over the city, in the direction of the palace. "I know."

He wondered what it was like to love someone that much. He had his mom and the rest of his adopted family, but he still wondered. He'd been brought up by that family and by SeeD to know that the right thing to do…was to do right. She'd been brought up that way too, but still she'd thrown it all away. He wondered whether one day he might find something or someone to believe in that much, to turn him into a raging berserker. He couldn't imagine it. Zell wasn't like the other Orphanage Gang, and he knew that somehow it set him apart from the rest. He'd been _happy_ with the family he had. Either his original parents hadn't needed or hadn't been able to keep him, but if it was the first he couldn't work up the energy to be angry at people he would never know and if it was the second he was grateful for them for putting him in the orphanage that had led him to his future. He'd seen Squall and Rinoa and Quistis and the others all wrestle with their own pasts, and simply hadn't known how to help. He'd asked Selphie once and she had had the same answer. _We'll try to help if they ask but…I don' think this is something we _can_ help 'em with Zell._ He'd known she was right.

"I'm sorry Xu. Me and Nida both."

Her lips twitched in a ghost of a smile. "You've nothing to apologise for Zell. Certainly not to me."

"We made it worse. Let you down." If he could have gone back in time, grabbed the shoulders of his younger self as he rushed out of Balamb with the stolen GF and brought him screeching to a halt he'd have done it. Everything had seemed to obvious back then. A daring rescue mission and a secret weapon, a story he could use to get free drinks for years. Instead he'd let his impulsive childish self drag them further down into the hole. Lost a being of unfathomable power and what's worse he'd dragged Nida with him too.

She shook her head, still staring out at the "I think we both could have done things differently."

"You can say that again." A pause. "We'll find a way to get her back."

"I can't think like that Zell," she said, and the despair in her voice was heartbreaking. She didn't turn up look at him as she spoke, and he didn't want to go up and look at her. There was something obscene about it. Xu was Garden's rock, he didn't want to see it crumble. "All those weeks I wondered, how I was going to do it? They named names one after another and I thought eventually I'd find one big enough to…God I don't know. To bargain with, maybe. But then I saw her on the screen looking and sounding like that and I…all of it was for nothing."

He stood, sat back down next to her and put a hand over his shoulder. "We'll find a way. There has to be one," he said, and tried to put into it all the certainty and maturity he'd spent his life avoiding.

She leaned into his side. When she spoke he could barely hear her over the breeze. "What if we have to kill her? I couldn't take it. She looked so cold. Like ice."

Something rattling around in his skull detached finally, like a tooth that was loose enough to worry him but not loose enough to come out. It dropped into his mind, and into view. _Like ice._ "Shiva." She didn't say anything, and he wondered whether he dared go on. Finally he decided; what the hell, he had nothing to lose. "Xu, you know about GFs, right?"

She chuckled. "A little." She'd taught the classes.

"When we junction 'em, when we let them into our head. They live in the brain, where we keep memories. They live there and the push out what was there before, that's why we forgot things when we use them." An idea was forming in his mind. He had no idea how dumb it was, or how stupid he might sound. He said it anyway. "They take them away, right? _What do they do with them?_"

She looked up into his eyes. "Yes, and?" It took a moment, but she got his point and all the sleep fell out of her eyes like she had been dunked in cold water. "You think…"

He brushed her off and stood. "I don't know Xu, I don't know. But it's worth a shot right? Quisty thinks she's someone else, she thinks whatever that bastard Aimsland made her think? Well what if he used Shiva to take all her old memories away first?"

"What if Shiva still has them?"

She blinked as if absorbing the information into whatever computer banks she held in her cavernous mind. When she spoke next it was with her old voice, the voice of command. "Call Fujin."

He obeyed.

* * *

><p>Fujin rubbed her eyes and tried to focus on the pair as Zell told them what he thought. "It…it could be." She looked at Xu. "You're the expert. You believe it could be possible?" Zell could see her thoughts: <em>It might be that simple?<em>

He raven-haired woman nodded emphatically. "I do."

That was all the encouragment Zell needed. "We need to get her - get Shiva - back."

"How?" Fujin asked.

He had and Xu had talked about it while the resistance member they'd called had went to wake Fujin up. He'd suggested some things and she had shot most of them down, but a couple of his ideas had stayed standing and she had built and added onto it until there was almost a ghost of a plan there. He told one to Fujin now and hoped it would be good enough.

Fujin just stared at the two for a second. She had aura now, an aura she hadn't had back in Deling. For most of her life Fujin Satomi had played second-fiddle to Seifer, the good underling. Then she had worked for Kiros, Squall, a host of others. Now here she was cut off from the rest of her organisation and she was thriving. She looked like a commander. "It could work," she said. "Maybe."

He breathed a sigh of relief and didn't care how obvious it was. He opened his mouth to speak but Fujin raised a hand, and he shut it again.

Fujin looked between the two. "_If_ we would do this, when would be the best time?"

"Today. Right now." He paused for a second as he saw the bleary stare in Fujin's eyes. He was probably sporting a look much the same. "Alright, tomorrow. That Compression has throw everything off their game, we need to _use _that." He hadn't been affected by it, and neither had anyone else among the resistance inner circle. It seemed like military training helped combat the distortion and mental stress of the thing. That or Zell's experiences with the previous Sorceress-induced world-crushing magic event had gave him a higher tolerance to it.

Fuji rubbed her eyes and pondered silently, for long enough that Zell couldn't bear the tension. Finally she looked back up, towards the others. "Well?"

Raijin nodded. "Hell yes."

Nida did the same. "It's worth a shot. What else do we have?"

Fujin turned to at Xu and Zell saw the flash of tension there. "Will you be okay?"

Xu stared at the other woman and this time there was no trace of the purposeless _thing_ that had walked into their hideout. "I can do it." She took a breath. "I won't let SeeD down again, I swear it."

Fujin nodded. A quick glance sent a nameless soldier towards her with a rolled-up piece of paper, and she spread it out on the floor between them. It was a map, a map of something Zell recognised well enough. "This is the palace." She looked between Raijin, Zell, Nida and finally Xu. All of them were thinking of the reality of that paper map. What was inside those walls. A counterfeit god and a crazed knight. A mad cultist prophet and his hired knives. It wouldn't be easy. "Sleep tonight. Plan tomorrow," Fujin said

"Then we go in."


	37. Xu Tyynes II

She couldn't get the blood off. No matter how hard she washed. She's scrubbed her hands red and raw in the small leaky and stifling bathroom that the resistance held their HQ at, but still she could feel it inside her skin. It felt like a thousand accusing needles poking at her. At first there hadn't been any at all. The generals had barely touched her conscience and their blood had slid from her as easily as throwing off a cloak. Then the long nights had come and every drop that had fallen on her had seemed harder and harder to get off. She'd wandered through towns in a daze, finding her target and repeating the same questions to the same faces, moving on to the next. The prickling had started on the fifth or sixth and she had spent hours in dingy washrooms just like this one, trying to erase the stain. Then she had seen the transmission from Timber. A face and voice that had reached through the red-and-black haze her mind was in and pulled her back up. Suddenly she emerged from the bloody trance and found herself surrounded by bodies, staring across a room at a flickering screen and hearing her love's voice. The voice and face had been the only thing she recognised.

_She promised me._

She still had the memory of them together under the moonlight at the Flower Cliffs. They'd talked from morning 'till dusk, keeping up appearances under the spotlights of the rest of the Garden. Finally night had fallen and they'd gone back to Xu's room. One last look at the open doorway and the tension had snapped like a wire under strain. They'd been kissing before the door had even closed and her lips had tasted like honey as Quistis had pulled them down together onto the couch. Quistis' hand had unbuttoned clothing as the other had grasped Xu's own and led it down skin like silk, and with a smile had whispered into her ear words that had almost finished her right there with their intensity: _Take me, all of me. _Looking down at the form beneath her she had wondered what she had done to deserve a love like that. She had walked her gaze and hands across that flawless body, the perfect figure that moved up and down with her breath, the smile of anticipation and contentment on her lover's face, and wanted it all. Years of sacrifice, training and monkish discipline towards the organisation called SeeD had broken down in an instant. The rest of that memory was an indescribable jumble of tastes and noises and feelings. Like a selfish child she had devoured every inch and taken everything offered. She'd teased, touched played while underneath her Quistis had writhed and buckled and whispered _I love you, don't stop, I love you, don't ever stop, I love you I love you I love you _between moans and gasps for air. They'd watched the petals blooming in the moonlight and talked and promised for hours. Then they had went back to bed and her love had smiled like a sweet devil and paid Xu back in kind. She had spent years turning her body into an instrument for combat, a rock, had never thought of it as something that could generate so much pleasure, but Quistis had stripped away everything and taken her down to a core of feeling that pulsed and vibrated with the blonde woman's touch.

_She promised me._

Now staring at her reflection in the greasy mirror she didn't know what she could do, or even what to think. She didn't know how it would end up, what result they would get. If their spur-of-the-moment plan based on half-recalled myths and not a little blind hope failed and they found themselves facing a furious wraith, or it worked perfectly and Xu would stare at her lover with her hands covered in blood and no excuses, no excuses at all as to how they got that way. How could she ever touch her again?

"Xu? Are you alright?"

_Too late to back out now. Too late for _anything_ now._

Before the rest of her could back out, SeeD Xu Tyynes turned and opened the door. Fujin might have caught a stray glimpse of fear from her eyes, but it was well masked as she strode past her to meet the others. "I'm ready." They'd planned everything they could possibly think of, from being discovered the second they entered the complex to Esthar suddenly bombarding the palace from orbit and everything in between. Now they could only hope it would be enough. To walk into a locked cage and snatch away a goddess.

"We won't let you down Xu," Nida said. The man looked nervous. Zell had demanded to go at first, until the combined efforts of the three of them had convinced the rash young man that there was no way on earth that he would be able to get in undetected. He'd fumed for a few hours, and settled for going out to…procure…the clothing they would need. He'd returned scratched and bruised but holding two armbands proudly. _If this is all I can do, guess I just gotta wish you both luck._

Xu looked across at Nida. "Nor I you."

Raijin coughed politely. "Xu I hate to ask but…what happens if you meet her, y'know?" The big man caught the looks the others were giving him but stood his ground. "She ain't who she was."

She caught Raijin's gaze and held it, knowing that the others were all listening for her answer.

"I'll do what has to be done," she lied.

SCENE BREAK

The man collapsed to the ground and lay there in the pouring rain as Nida fumbled with keys in the lock. Xu scanned the man like a surgeon checking for life, but found no radio or beeper. Whatever the man had been before he had been a cultist, he certainly hadn't been a guard. She looked back a Nida. "Well?"

His reply was barely audible over the noise and thunder. "Give me a minute."

As if some cosmic deity smiled down on their mission the clouds had rolled in off the coast and sat there over the city like sullen children, hurling down torrents of rain. They'd almost been able to walk to up the front gate, the entire mountainside shrouded in a thick curtain of water that battered them mercilessly. It had been slow going but eventually Nida had led her around to the gateway that had been least well-defended. Even then they'd encountered three of the Faithful patrolling the grounds. One had waved a hand and passed them through, but another hadn't been so easygoing and was now lying under a nearby tree covered in bracken.

"Got it."

Inside they could still hear the thunder and rain hammering against the glass and stonework of the building, as if angry the pair had escaped and desperate to get inside and drag them back out. Xu shook of the stolen cloak and stood there in the dark corridor, alert for anything louder than a pinprick. She glanced across at Nida, who had done the same thing. Neither of them had brought anything bigger than a butterknife in with them. Xu had left most of her knives with Fujin, and Nida had a small pistol. Whether either would be useful if they were found inside a building containing dozens of their enemies was something she pushed out of her mind.

Nida threw off his coat to show the neat janitor's uniform underneath. He tipped his head to Xu with an ironic grin. "Good luck." He walked away into the castle. If questioned he would be just one more functionary in a mansion full of them.

_Hyne if you're up there then give me luck._

She walked through the castle like a ghost. Occasionally she would hear footsteps in the distance and the breath would tighten in her chest as someone would pass by her. Nobody looked up at though, except to glance at the hunched clerk that walked past them on their way to wherever clerks went. She was invisible, so long as she didn't raise her head, didn't show any sign of life louder than a shuffled walk. And still every time they passed she had to suppress the urge to take their shiny useless weapons away from them and shove them down their throats. But she recognised the urge well, and pushed it back down.

_She made a promise._

The doors to the library slid open on smooth hinged, the rain pounding at the glass walls of the cavernous room making more noise. The old duke had liked to read, had filled it up with everything he had been able to lay his hands on. In his cups once Laguna had admitted to more than a few letters from the old man after the Hologram Wall had come down, asking for anything they could spare. Xu had liked Duke Nuo. A simple man who had tried to look after his city as best he could. How Li had come from that she had no idea. Now the books lay scattered across half the tables in the room. She cursed as she heard the dry rasp of turning pages. She wanted to be past this place and into the palace interior, and this was the fastest route. So be it. She started walking. Or she would have, if…

"Hello?"

She froze, one foot about to touch down, as the voice sounded through the echoing chamber. For a moment she considered leaving, just turning back and finding another route through into the core, but she couldn't think of any that wouldn't be heavily-guarded. In the end the choice was made for her, and as the figure walked out of the stacks of shelves towards her she stood down and assumed as submissive a pose as she could, trying to pass herself off as the clerical functionary she had stolen the clothes of.

"Hello? Hel- Oh."

She looked up and saw the surprised man – no, not that old – the surprised _boy_ looking down at her. His eyes widened in recognition and for a second she wondered whether she could cut him down fast enough to stop him from crying out when her _own_ mind finally supplied a name to match the face. "Alec Nuo?"

The young duke nodded once and stared at her in shock. "I remember you. You're Tyynes, you work for SeeD." He blinked, and she could see something in his eyes which wasn't quite right. "You came here, after the Second War."

She had. She'd spent a few days in the city before moving on to Galbadia, and then back once more when the Duchess had begun her blitzkrieg against the still-recovering city. She'd spent most of that time arguing and shouting with Dollet's royalty before returning to Balamb, but she had met the boy then, and Xu never forgot a face if there was a chance it belonged to someone important. Or dangerous.

She was jerked out of her memory as she realised she was deep inside the enemy stronghold, staring at their figurehead. Something in her gaze or stance must have transmitted itself across the space between them because t Alec Nuo raised a hand to wave her off. "If you're trying to get into the palace you should watch out, the guard is much larger in the inner rooms than the outside ones. You can take the second door from here inside and then use the courtyards to go past the patrols."

They stared at each other as at the windows the storm pounded down onto the palace. Xu looked into Alec Nuo's eyes and saw only resignation. He was still young, not much older than she had been when she had taken up her final SeeD training, but his eyes were much older. "Why are you helping me?"

He sat down at the polished oaken desk and stared out at the rain. He turned to look at her and she could feel the weight in his words. "He lied to me." He laughed but there was no humour in it. "Figured it out, but too late."

She didn't ask who he meant. "What did he tell you?"

Alec shrugged. "What you saw on the news, same as I did. He brought her right into the throne-room too, told me she kill-" His body shook, just a little bit, "-told me she did those things, and I swallowed it whole."

"Quistis." She could say the name without feeling like she wanted to cry, at least.

He nodded. "I met her before, you know? I was walking with…with my relatives in the gardens when we met her. She was beautiful. I was a little star-struck I guess, because we talked and I only remember I must have sounded like an idiot to her. Just some kid, she probably met hundreds like me." He smiled. "It was nice. _They_ liked her, too." He stopped and shuddered, and Xu knew what he was remembering. Who he was remembering. They'd been barely old enough to know their own names but to Aimsland it hadn't mattered. They'd died anyway. "_He_ was there even. Called himself a retainer for the kids, just watched everything from inside and waited for his chance. Told me later it was all to keep me safe, since I was the heir."

"What did Aimsland do?" He seemed to need to tell someone. Trapped inside the castle for months, slowly watching his kingdom slip away from him and nothing he could do but pace inside this golden cage as his people were replaced with fanatics.

"He brought her up to the throne-room, told me she'd killed my aunt and little…and the others. Told me SeeD were planning on taking Dollet because of what aunt Li did to Galbadia. Said he'd help me stop them, get even."

The other Xu, the vengueful geist that had stalked across the continent in a haze of murder, would have hated him. Now she couldn't work up the energy. She simply felt sorry for him. He'd had his entire world torn upside-down in a single night, his closest relatives snatched away by a cruel and uncaring world, and there in front of him was a kindly servant saying that _this woman_ right here was the cause. That fucker. "He's an excellent liar."

"I was angry and scared. I let them do what they wanted with her, told them I didn't care." He seemed to notice her twitch and looked up into her eyes. "Were you close?"

_She promised me._ "We were."

"She's…she's not who I remember. Neither of them are. They have rooms in the inner complex, I try and avoid them. I think they can see into my soul. They know I'm not loyal." He gestured around at the open books scattered around. "I spend a lot of time here."

She could feel something fluttering inside her stomach. Whether it was fear or anticipation Xu couldn't tell. "Almas? She's here?"

In reply Alec nodded.

_My God. How strong is she? Can she sense things? Does she know I'm here already?_ She could feel herself start to shiver and commanded her body to stop. She looked back at Alec and made up her mind. "I'm with my comrades. We think there's something here that can help us. Maybe get the cultists out of the…out of your city. Turn Quistis back to the way she was."

"The ice demon." Xu was brought up short, no idea how to respond, and Alec Nuo kept talking. "They brought it through here after Imal- after Quistis came up out of the dungeon. Morden said they needed to keep it safe, just in case. They keep it somewhere with…well, inside I guess…one of the loyal guards."

Xu wondered who. She didn't know how badly they must have starved Shiva for her to devour Quistis' old mind but after she had fed – just thinking the words made her shudder – she would have been furious beyond belief. Guardian Forces didn't have anything like comprehensible minds or motivations, at least not ones SeeD had ever been able to puzzle out. But Balamb Garden had more experience with the beings than most and GFs grew attachments to certain people they junctioned with. Selphie and some of the younger SeeDs had thought of it as mutual friendship but Xu wasn't convinced. She'd had one of them in her mind once, just to see. She'd felt power run through her fingertips but in her mind all she could feel was…amusement. Like a man staring at a cute animal as it did tricks. There was no friendship there. But a man is furious if someone kills his favourite pet. Anyone who hosted an angry Shiva must have had godlike willpower to stay sane in the mental storm she'd unleash inside them. "How do you know? Are you sure?" She felt her heart sinking. If the GF was being hosted and not dormant in a physical state, any chance they had of getting Shiva back undetected was impossible.

"I heard Morden talking about it to one of his men. He didn't think I'd listen, or he didn't care if I did. I'm nobody to him now." The words were spat out, and she had no reason to think he was lying. _Shit._ "What are you going to do?"

She could have left. Called Nida back and told him it was impossible and why. Went back to the others and probably back to Garden to Squall and the rest of SeeD and start putting into action some kind of plan to deal with all of this. But she couldn't. She just couldn't do it. "I'm going to get and get it. I have to." She knew if she turned back and left now she wouldn't be able to live with herself. Would one day find a gun and use it on herself. "Thank you, Alec. I'm sorry, you're wrapped up in this because of us."

He shook his head. "Don't be sorry. Just make them pay."

That, she could do. She moved past the man in a boy's body, leaving the young deposed royal behind her, and headed deeper into the snake's nest. She wondered if she would ever leave.

* * *

><p>She took shelter behind one of the pillars that dotted the inner palace and tried to plan her next move. She knew she was wandering around uselessly, knew now that her target wasn't some sealed room or chamber but a living being walking the palace with her. Common sense and her own training told Xu the best thing to do was leave, come back with a better plan and more information, and it took all her courage not to listen to it. She wouldn't leave. Not while there was even the thinnest chance that…<p>

"What are you doing?"

She didn't have time to curse herself for not noticing then man, and then realised why as he walked towards her. He made no noise. She bowed as quickly as she could and tried with all her might to look like a confused little serving wench. "I'm…I'm sorry sir. I was looking for the servant's quarters, but…_"_

Kettil stared down at her with calculating eyes and she could feel herself begin to sweat. There was a faint ringing in her ears she couldn't quite place, like a distant phone ringing with a melody she barely had heard before. "Curfew for servants is eleven, what were you doing outside your rooms? I can check."

She almost smiled at the circumstances. By sheer luck she had a gold-plated cover. "The young duke, sir. He asked me to bring him some supplies."

For a moment there was silence in the black corridor, Xu's heart pounding so hard she knew he would have heard if not for the pouring rain. Finally Kettil spoke. Xu wished she knew more about the man. Zell's final report from Centra had talked about a knife-fighter working for the cultists and for all the mutual fun they had at each other's expense she took his advice seriously when it came to combat. If Zell rated him then so did she. She felt the skin on her hands crawl as brown eyes stared down into hers. She had a single longknife secured under the dowdy servant's uniform and she knew it wouldn't be enough. When she spoke next she knew she had no choice but to follow or risk death. "You'll do then. Come with me."

She found herself led deeper into the maze of corridors and windows, with every step vibrating up her feet into her heart as she wondered how long it would take for him to turn around and _really_ look at her. Even if it was a ridiculous thought she just couldn't shake it. She had been in undercover operations before, had sat and eaten near people who would cheerfully have slit her throat, but somehow this was worse. Just being inside the massive stone-and-marble complex was putting her on edge. She imagined how much blood must have flowed across these floors. As they walked through the seemingly endless maze she realised what it reminded her of; Galbadia Garden. The Dollet palace was immaculately kept but it had no soul. Every home or apartment she had ever been or lived in somehow had their owner's personalities stamped on them. Her own rooms in Garden was clean and spacious, everything exactly where she needed it. Quistis' rooms in the MD level were dark and cold at first glance but warmed quickly the more you spent time there. The apartment that Squall and Rinoa shared wavered between controlled chaos and order depending on which of them was at Garden that day. But here there was nothing like that. They could have been walking through a museum. Whatever soul the Nuo family had given their home had been stamped on and wiped away by the cultists.

"Come." Kettil pushed the door open and walked into the room, simply knowing that as a servant she would obey him. She did, and her heart stopped, the buzzing in her head forgotten as Kettil stopped blocking her view and she saw into the room. She had been wrong. Whatever soul the palace had hadn't been destroyed, it had simply been taken and…appropriated. A blazing fire cast warm light across the room, shadows reaching back where huge oaken chairs blocked the light. It looked like something from a fairy story. Like the grainy pictures in books she had read as a child, a wizened narrator sitting there and telling her whatever tale she had picked up that day. But instead of an old man there were two figures there instead. A woman sat in a high-backed armchair, a younger woman sat on the floor in front of her as she tried to untangle the mess that was her hair. Long black hair.

"-if you'd just stay still we could have been done by now. I _did_ warn you."

"It ow! It was just an accident. Stop worrying so much, you're not my mother."

"No, just your knight. A mother would have disowned you for doing something like that. Do you realise how worried I was?"

"You're to help me take these to the library and see they're sorted and stacked." Kettil pointed at the back of the room and Xu could see the books piled there in the shadows cast by the chairs blocking the fire. She walked over to them, trying to keep her hands from shaking, trying to ignore the voices coming from the seat in front of the fireplace. She could hear Almas talking animatedly, something she had never known the little grey nonentity to do in sentences longer than a couple of words. In the time when Xu had to visit Dollet when Li Nuo was alive her presence had always been a less-than-subtle knife standing by her ruler's side. That wasn't the case anymore. Now she was talking animatedly, easily, happily. The replies coming back from the other woman were what cut t Xu's heart though, and she knew that if she let it, her breath would freeze up in her throat. _Quistiis._ She wanted to drop this worthless pretence, turn and walk over and grab her by the shoulders and _make her_ remember. But she knew she might as well cut her own throat. Quistis' voice didn't sound angry or cold or alien to her. It sounded like the woman she remembered, the kind and loving Quistis that had whispered a promise into her ear years ago. And now that voice was talking to that _thing_ like it had once talked to her. She turned back to Kettil, and as she swung around she couldn't avoid it. Quistis sat there, long blonde hair hanging free and cascading down her shoulders, looking down at Almas as she worked at freeing knots in her messy black coils, occasionally nodding as they talked. Xu saw the two of them sitting there and they could have been any mother and daughter. When she let herself be led out of the room it wasn't because she was pretending to be meek. She felt trapped between herself, wanting to run away as fast as she could from that saccharine scene, and at the same time slam back the door and grab Quistis by the shoulders and shake her until that grotesque persona fell away.

_You promised me._

"We're here."

She barely heard the words and looked up. It took her a second to realise that something was wrong, that they weren't in the library. It was a stone-walled room, with only a couple of doors in the wall, one of them radiating chill into the room, and nothing else. She heard a long slow creek, and turned around to see Kettil closing the door they had came through, and locking it.

"Do you understand now?"

She reacted as fast as she could but she had no chance. Her hands were loaded down with books, she hadn't been prepared at all, and his hands were already on the handles of the blades at his belt. The dry pages crashed to the floor, but Kettil's voice wasn't the only sound in the room and her hands stopped halfway to her knife as she realised they weren't alone. Two white-banded men had come into the room through another door, flanking between them a third figure. Nida stood between them, one gun pointed at her back, another pointed across the room right at her. _Damnit!_ She caught Nida's glance and saw in his face just as much confusion as she had shock. Clearly he hadn't been expecting to see her. "What is this?"

"Your one and only chance, commander Tyynes."

She didn't bother to deny who she was. "I'm not a commander." It took all her self-control not to spit the words out, and keep the tears inside her skull. _Damnit damnit damnit. _Everything blown and ruined because of sheer awful luck of meeting the man in the hallway. "How did you know who I was? We've never met."

"Correct, _we_ haven't. But someone else has."

_Of course._ In that moment she knew, and as the steel door swung open one more time she knew who was walking in. But something was different again. The Almas Jordin she remembered from the past was an emotionless killer, the one she had met mere minutes ago had been a normal woman in her early-twenties, confident and safe and smiling. Now Xu faced the fake Sorceress as she walked towards her and both of those people were gone, replaced with a nervous figure that looked hunched and…scared? Kettil moved to the side, across the room to Nida, and Xu was left standing there defenceless and in her ridiculous costume as the being came closer and closer. Finally, she spoke. "You're Xu. I remember you."

Even though Xu was totally within their power there was something frightened in those eyes, in that voice, and the SeeD realised it was frightened of _her._ A weakness. She knew how to take advantage of those. "Well?" she barked.

Almas flinched but didn't back down. "You came for this, take it."

Xu whipped around as she heard the scream, and saw Kettil standing over Nida as her comrade collapsed to his knees, eyes rolled so far back into his head all she could see was white, and a ghastly rattle sounding from his mouth. _It was him, he had her._ That was the buzzing she had been hearing from near the man. Kettil had been the holder of Shiva, and now he was forcing the GF into Nida's mind. She wanted to go over and help him but the blank expressions on the faces of the two soldiers and Kettil's hands twitching near his belt froze her legs like they were ice. She looked back at Almas. "Why are you doing this?"

Still that frightened look as Almas spoke again. "You can have her, the ice-thing, just take her and go. Maybe…maybe there's enough in there, maybe you can find someone else to put them in."

Xu understood then. Her hands were already halfway up to Almas' throat when her rational mind pulled at the reigns and screamed _if you do this you'll both die_ at her rage. Her hands stopped, twisted like claws and she didn't know whether the next noise out of her throat would be a scream or a sob. She met the gaze of the artificial goddess and realised what kind of Faustian deal she was expected to make. _Sure Xu, you can have Quistis' memories, if Shiva has any left. But I'm keeping the rest._

_NO! She's mine, MINE! You can't have her, YOU CAN'T HAVE HER!_

"There, I can feel it," Almas said, and Xu realised why the Sorceress was frightened. Xu's anger was like a furnace, and the young sorceress could feel those emotions radiating from her like they were real fire. No wonder she'd been discovered. They had never even looked at each other but when she walked into the library Almas had felt those emotions like a grenade in the room.

"Don't….don't talk about her like…" Xu trailed off, to angry to even speak. She wanted to do something, anything. Tear down the walls around her. Take Shiva from Nida's mind and turn the small fear on her adversary's face into real terror. But she couldn't. She let herself be led away, as Kettil and the two men walked and dragged herself and Nida out through the dusty basement walls and to the door leading out. She looked at the rain still pouring down and wondered whether she'd ever feel warm again.

"You must have loved her a lot."

She didn't look up at the man. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction. "She's mine."

"No," Kettil corrected softly. "Quistis Trepe was yours. Imalia is one of us. Go home and grieve, Ms Tyynes. We all move on eventually. Trust me, I know. And this will all be over soon. Maybe in a perfect world there'll be room enough for both of them to live at the same time. But not in this one."

_Fuck you. Fuck you and die. _"Morden will be furious you've let us go."

"He doesn't know I'm doing this. Neither does Imalia, or trust me she would have been here and you'd be dead. Almas dreamed this one up all on her own."

There was no anger or hate in his voice, and she had nothing to lose. "Who _are_ you?" She searched her memory as deep as she could but there was nothing there. She'd never heard of this man. "Why this…gift?" Goddamn if she could find any other way to describe it. They had what they had come for, but the victory was hollow. The opposing team had thrown the match, handed them the trophy without a fight.

"You have memories to remember her by. I wasn't given the same luxury."

For a second she had no idea what he meant, and then it quietly clicked into place_._ "Who was it? Who did you lose?"

They paused there on the threshold of the night, and when the man called Kettil spoke it was with the first real feeling she had heard from him. "My wife. Years ago, in the Aftermath."

_Does he blame us?_ Another soul trapped by a past he couldn't forget. "Time Compression won't bring her back to life."

Kettil smiled sadly as he spoke. "No, but it will bring me to her, and that's enough. Goodbye Ms Tyynes."

The door slid shut without a sound. She stood there for minutes, just looking back at the steel shutter, thinking about the warmth on the other side, and the people enveloped in it. Eventually she turned away, the rain battering at her soaked clothes and running down her face in rivulets that stung like wasps. She picked Nida up as gently as dared, and began the trek down the hill towards the town. She tried to take her mind away from the things she had just seen.

That was why it took her so long to realise that the crackles coming from below were not rain bouncing from rooftops, but gunfire.


	38. SeeD

He wiped his face to clear it of the pouring rain, but as soon as he took his hand away it flowed back over him again as if mocking his efforts. They had tried to come in under the cover of the night, expecting the rain and thunder to give them some cover. What they hadn't expected had been the storm of the century lashing down on the coast like Hyne's wrath itself.

_For all we know it could be._

They had all been doing it. Sidelong looks or quick glances at the sky, all of them half expecting to see a pale white light hovering in the air directing the torrent at them. Irvine could see shadows flitting across his vision as the other SeeDs moved up into the city and with a stab of pride thought _that's my training_. Laguna had asked for a full assault but he had talked and cajoled and wheedled the man around to something quieter and a lot less bloody. Finally the Estharian president had just nodded and said; _whatever you think is best._ His best was with him now, and the small group had landed without hope, if not without bloodshed. Several cultists already lay at the bottom of the harbour, those unlucky enough to be near the docks when they had landed. His guilt at the deaths offset by the white bands around their arms.

He gave in to the compulsion, wiping his face down as he crept up into the lee of a building. The shelter gave him a few seconds of rain-free pause and he looked up the street. Dollet at night was a dead city and he thanked whatever god was looking down on them as he crept up to the lone emplacement and went to work. Relics from before even the Second War, Irvine didn't want the guns here when the real attack came. Garden sat offshore, landing craft ready and waiting as he went to work.

"Irvine, we're done."

He heard Selphie's voice but didn't reply. Her pack had been thrown off somewhere, empty. "Let me borrow one of yours, I'll finish the others." She hadn't lost it, he knew. She had simply already taken care of her targets and wanted to do some of his too. Even her voice was quick, words coming out in a short quick flow. She had been giddy since they had left, eager to get to work. When she had work to do Selphie Tilmitt poured everything she had into it.

"Hey, what are you- get away from there!"

Before Irvine could freeze Selphie was already on her feet and spinning around to face the intruder with a smile on her face. "Sorry, sorry! We were just walking home from…well my boyfriend needed a bit of a break if you catch my _drift."_

The man never heard the last word, as Selphie got close enough and her hands out from behind her, nunchucks smacking into the guard's head with a sharp _crack_ of something delicate breaking. Without losing a step Selphie daintily stepped around his falling shape, and pitched him into the water. Selphie's smile vanished quickly as she rushed past him. "Tick-tock, lover-boy." Guards had rotas, and rotas were checked. They were on a timer now. He laid the bomb as fast as he could before moving on. Moving on too fast, as he focussed too much on what was ahead of him, missing the wide eyes of the soldier that had been sheltering from the rain in an ally. His gaze met Irvine's and for a moment nothing happened. Then the man overcame his shock and opened his mouth even as the hands he had been trying to rub warmth into went down to his weapon.

_Stupid moron!_ Irvine chastised himself. His hands were much faster, but it didn't matter which of them fired. All he could hope was that it would be mistaken for thunder. Irvine's pistol was up and aimed before the cultist's rifle had even gotten to his shoulder and red bloomed on the soldier's chest as a sharp _crack_ and the smell of cordite rang through the air.

He couldn't hear the shouts over the sound of rain hitting the stone and metal of the harbour but he knew it had to be there. He ran as fast as he could to the last gun and simply primed and hurled the backpack into its innards. Something fast and hot whizzed by his head and he was moving sideways and turning with only one thought; the cultist insignia made an extremely convenient target.

He fired slightly right-and-up of the white rectangle in the darkness. Seconds later red and orange clouds burst into life along he shorefront as the tiny bombs did their work to the sea-facing defences of Dollet, explosions momentarily lighting up the night before being smothered by the pouding rain. They'd done their job though, and as Irvine dived for the closest piece of cover he could find he saw the twisted barrels and warped sides. Reaching for the flare-gun he pointed straight up and fired, before tossing the thing away and going back to his rifle. Somewhere out there in the darkness Selphie would already be moving with a dancer's grace and a wasp's sting, and for all that he wanted to go and find her he knew he'd have to fight his way to her now, as more voices began to emerge from inside the wasp's-nest of a city. He draw out his rifle, sighted for the nearest armband, and began to shoot.

* * *

><p>"Do you hear that?"<p>

Fujin looked around as Raijin went over to the window and she resisted the urge to bark at the man. The rain hammered at her skull like nails against a chalkboard. Even as she just wanted to sleep she knew she never would, not with Xu and Nida inside the belly of the beast. "Go back to sleep," she said irritably. Left alone Raijin would stay up all night worrying. That this was what _she_ was doing didn't bother her. A leader was expected to carry the load for her men.

"I'm serious Fu, sounded like something other than thunder."

She paused, pen still hovering on the last word of her letter. For all she knew she was writing to ghosts now, none of her last letters had been answered. Part of her wanted to stop writing in case their line of communication was discovered, but the rest had overruled her. Whether because SeeD needed to know exactly what was happening inside the locked-down city or just because she herself wanted to remember that there was an _outside_, the letters kept going. Dollet reminded her too much of the old Galbadian orphanage she and the other two had walked out from. A cold stone prison with no way out, and this time the porters were armed. She-

She heard it. Not the sharp crackle and row rolling sounds of thunder, but something both softer and quicker. The dull sound made when something metal bends and twists from something expanding inside of it. "Explosives." Her heart leapt. _Is this it?_

Without needing to be told even once, Raijin was already moving, throwing Fujin her coat even as Zell barged out of the sleeping-rooms. He apparently hadn't needed to be told either. "You heard that?" He caught the jacket as it was handed to him and slipped a hand into the pocket. It came back out wielding cold metal knuckledusters. "Is this it?"

Raijin grinned as he opened the door. "Must be." All three of them heard it, a shout over the rain and hurrying footsteps. The black man took a huge lungful of the stormy salt air and smiled. "Time to hit the great outdoors again Fu. Been a long time. y'know."

_Finally._ She wanted to get out of the city, back to somewhere she wouldn't have to spend her days scurrying about back-alleys and sewers, where she could look up and see the sun instead of endless stonework. Green fields instead of blue waves.

Others were already coming into the room, woken and shook as the news passed along the daisy-chain. Runners would already be moving out to the other safehouses as those loyal to either SeeD or to the old Dollet rule were told _now it's time to take back your city._ She looked around the dim wooden room. Those in the Resistance leadership had been smart enough to give orders as well as take them, or experienced enough to know their way around a blade. Some of them had been soldiers in the Second War, when Galbadia had been the invading force. Now they wanted to kick out the new intruders, and they had the same half-smile on that Raijin did.

"Time to work."

* * *

><p>"Nida wake <em>up<em>."

She shook him again and this time the man managed to open his eyes for a few seconds, squinting at her like an old man with bad sight. She sighed in frustration as below her the popping sound of cheap rifles combined with a sharper noise she remembered well enough, from hearing it thousands of times in the Garden training centre. Irvine was down there somewhere, and from the sounds of it was busy. She wanted to be down there, but Nida's weight across her shoulders reminded her she had another obligation. She could still see the eyes of Kettil in her mind, the last words he had spoken to her before forcing them out into the pouring rain. Pity and confidence and sorrow all wrapped up into one uncaring package. They had looked at her and seen no threat, and simply let her go. It had been humiliating and terrifying at the same time. They'd thrown her out of the castle while they worked that insane Sorcery inside, and it was all she could do to beat on the doors.

_Maybe this is your punishment. Spent your life sitting in the dark and controlling others. A little spider in her web. Now these people have come through and smashed all your strings, and there's nothing you can do except sit and watch as your life is carried away._

She heard footsteps and half-walked, half-dragged Nida into one of Dollet's thousand shadowed alleys. Soldiers ran past heading down to the lower quarters of the city, all of them wearing the armband. The torrent lessened and she wiped herself clean as she caught her breath, wondering what she was going to do next. She had always been a planner, always prided herself on thinking before acting. Now that she really needed it, it was nowhere to be found. If this was her punishment for the trail of slaughter she had carved across the countryside, so be it. At least she could go out fighting, before the curtain fell. Maybe she would get one more shot, if they ventured out.

She hauled Nida up, and together the pair dragged themselves down into the rainy hell, as lights bloomed across the harbour. She smiled. Those lights she recognised well enough.

"Ms Tyynes?" Even exhausted with shock and fatigue she knew the voice for one of the resistance members and nodded as the man splashed through the puddles towards her. He was young, most likely one of the new breed that didn't agree with how their city had been taken, rather than the old ones that still remembered Galbadia's guns on their streets. Not that it mattered anymore. Now, all of them had experienced Time Compression, and even a failed one had taught people they didn't want to go through another. "We were told to watch the palace in case of…are you…?"

Without thinking she hauled Nida from her shoulder and onto the young man. "Take him," she barked. "Find Fujin Satomi, tell her I'm going down into the city to link up with SeeD." She checked the knife strapped to what remained of her disguise. There were dozens of white-banded men down there in the city. One sure strike would be all she'd need to get herself a gun.

The man wavered for a second. "She asked me to ask you for results." His hesitance was obvious. A blind man could have looked at them coming out, practically escorted from the building, and known something had gone wrong. "She wanted to know…err…if there was anything we should know?"

She stopped and thought for a second; calling up what was left of her mental agility and trying for some sort of distance from herself.

_It's over._

_It isn't. We have Shiva. It might be enough._

_It might not, and if it isn't Fujin and the others won't be able to bring her down gently. Not the way she is now. She has _power_ and unlike Quisty this thing isn't afraid to use it._

_There's hope yet. I can't…_

_Look down there Xu._ Lights flashed in the darkness as more and more guns and voices joined the dark wet mess. Her comrades were down there, and more than likely people who had once been her friends. _They have to know, one way or another. If they fight half-heartedly they'll die. She'll cut them down._

She looked up at the boy, still standing there patiently, one hand effortlessly propping Nida up. Suddenly Xu felt old. "Tell her we failed. There's nothing left for us to try." Inside, she beat herself as she said it. "Tell her if they meet Imalia Aimsland, to kill on sight."

The man just nodded and walked off, unaffected by the turmoil Xu felt inside. She stared after him for a moment as he vanished into the rain and stonework, alone in the downpour. Then she took a breath, shrugged her emotions from her shoulders like the rain pouring onto her, and began to stride down the hill into Dollet's drenched hell. Whatever was down there couldn't possibly be as chaotic as what was inside that castle. Or as painful as what she felt inside.

* * *

><p>The landing craft beached themselves, hulls scraping across the sand and metal as they threw themselves up out of the water and onto the city, fronts splitting open to disgorge the men and women inside. Zell was already there to greet the first soldier that came out. He looked young and eager, and not for the first time Zell felt just a little old.<p>

_That would have been me six years ago._ He shouted instructions and orders and the man just nodded as his squad came out behind him, fanning out and running up the stonework like ants out of a nest. Or wasps.

"Havin' fun?" Raijin almost had to shout to be heard over the rain. For all the chaos and darkness the man looked in his element, and already the top of his boa staff was a little redder than the last.

Once he would have loved it, been like the other man. But he'd seen too much now to be enthusiastic about fighting. He could think back over the last five years since the Second War, and all his happiest memories weren't the battles he'd won or enemies he'd taken down, but just being in Garden, or with his family. "Not so much."

Raijin grimaced. "Well here's some good news and bad for ya."

Zell listened for an moment, his emotion whiplashing between happiness and concern. _Xu's out?_ "Did she…"

Raijin shook his head, dislodging a cascade of rain to the ground. "Talked with the others already. She told 'em; you see her, you take her if you can."

He didn't have a reply to that. He'd been hoping for something more, for Xu to come down like she always had and hand over some perfect explanation like she always did._ Can I do it if I see her?_ But he remembered the pictures, the remnants of Timber as they had passed by. Buildings and bodies cut up like some bizarre lab experiment. Others incinerated from the air. If they met he wasn't going to have time to think about it. Imalia Aimsland was an enemy. Like Ultimecia. Like the man in black. Very carefully he put away the memories of his older sister. He just hoped he'd be able to take them out again one day.

* * *

><p>At first he didn't see it for what it was, just another flash in a torrential night. Then he heard a scream from his side, and he looked to see a SeeD holding onto his arm as it smouldered. From the fingers to the elbow was charred flesh. The man's eyes rolled up into his sockets and Irvine dived across for him as something harsh and white swept across the harbour, incinerating the ground where it passed. No, not incinerating. The ground was simply wiped clean of colour. He dragged the man into cover and left him there, no time or equipment to help. He looked up into the sky, squinting to keep the rain out, and saw it up thee. Not her. He wouldn't think of it like that.<p>

Off-white wings floated above the battlefield, sweeping to and fro, pausing sometimes as a line of white hot _something_ stabbed down. Where that line connected with the battlefield he heard screams and knew that his comrades would be burning. He only hoped more would look up. Even as he watched the shape swung back and the air around him felt warm and stuffy, and he was already moving away as the stonework began to bubble and melt. Bullets whizzed past him leaving ringing in his ears as he ran and his gun fired almost by itself as he moved up and deeper into the city, cries of pain and anger as the volunteer cultists came up against a real soldier. He didn't even spare them a thought. He could see the palace outlined against the dark, high up in the distance.

"_IRVINE!"_

He was about to shout at the newcomer for drawing attention when he saw who it was, and for the first time in quite a while he felt like smiling. "Well well. Come to actually go some work instead of sit in your nice cushy hideout?"

Zell almost grinned. "Someone has to make sure you stay awake." They clapped hands and Irvine really did smile this time. It _was_ good to see him again, even as they sat in the darkness, surrounded the enemy and fighting an uphill battle against fanatics. "We've been ready for a while, just waiting for you to come."

Even as he spoke Irvine could fire blooming deep within the city. "I can see that. Listen, about…"

"No luck."

"None?"

"Just don't think about it man," Zell said with feeling, and Irvine just shrugged and agreed. "We were going to head up the palace, but…" He waved a hand upward. The white spark sat in the air like a searchlight. "What the hell do we do about that? And where the hell is Rinoa and the others?"

Irvine wished he could tell him. Seifer had taken one of Esthar's cutters and left for Centra, but nobody had heard anything from him, or from Squall and Rinoa. Centra was a mystery, and Irvine told him that. "We have the next best thing though."

As in on cue a shrill roar filled the air above the city, and the pale dot's beam of light wavered as something red and huge passed by in a blue. The Ragnarok powered over Dollet and was already turning for a second pass, the massive under-slung cannon glowing like a miniature sun. Unfortunate the dot didn't need to turn, and the beam flew up from the ground to be aimed at the ship.

"God damn," Zell said in wonder as above them red and white meshed together, and the pale dot of the artificial Sorceress sped off in pursuit of the Estharian flagship.

Irvine smiled. "And that's not all we brought."

* * *

><p>She was in shelter when it came by, braced against the wall and pulling as hard as she could to tighten the tourniquet on the bleeding man's arm. He grimaced but didn't cry out, just nodded as she asked him whether she was alright. The others were out on the street scanning ahead for incoming soldiers and they stood no chance, none at all.<p>

Selphie spun as the first man began to scream, and could do nothing but watch as the man furthest past their position simply fell apart, the ground underneath him suddenly full of cracks as flesh, bone, masonry and glass were reduced to fist-sized chunks, split up neatly like a guillotine had fallen through them. The others could do nothing but bring up their weapons, and Selphie couldn't shout a warning fast enough as the ground peeled apart, taking the resistance fighters with it. The blood rand down the street back towards the harbour, mixing with the downpour and turning the scene into a sheet of murky red. Only two were fast enough and far back enough to react, and they dived for the nearest cover they could find. Before the sharp nothingness reached them, it stopped, and a voice called out above the rain.

"It doesn't have to be this way, men."

She kept quiet, pressed up against the wall as hard as she could and hoping that she wouldn't be noticed. She'd never been a fantastic, or even a half-decent shot, preferring to use her nunchucks to disable her opponent rather than kill them. Now though she wished she had brought _something_. A rifle lay on the cobblestones not ten meters away, but she didn't dare make a break for it. Beneath her the man whimpered, good arm held over his mouth as he tried to keep from making a sound.

"You think you're fighting for your city, but the people you're fighting with don't care about that. You deserve better than to die for some SeeD outsiders. None of this will be needed in the heaven we have planned. You-"

Her mouth moved before her brain could stop her. "A fake heaven." _Tilmitt you dummy what are you doing!_ But she couldn't help it. That voice saying those words just went against something in her mind. For a second there was no sound except water drumming against stone and iron as it fell onto the city, and for a moment she wondered if the voice had wandered off. Then…

"Selphie Tilmitt. You're a long way from home little girl."

She glanced down at the injured solider, who was just staring into space as his injured and bandaged arm shook softly. The makeshift bandage was already stained red. Across the street the remaining members of her squad were covering, weapons jittering about as their hands shook. None of the three could have older than her. None of them looked like they had been soldiers before this day. She looked at the red sheet that carpeted the stone beneath her, and make her decision. "Let them go."

"In exchange for you?" The voice was amused.

"For me." She would be able to see her, at least. "One is injured."

"There's a hospital uphill. They'll be held there but he'll get helped."

"I asked you to let them go-"

"They'll pay a price for rebellion, which is less than they'd have got following _you_ to their deaths, SeeD. Take it or leave it, it'll all I'm offering."

The two soldiers came out hesitantly, guns clattering the floor where they slid down the hill. They took quick glances uphill as they moved across to her and together hauled up their injured friend. With an apologetic look at Selphie the three friends walked away uphill towards help, leaving her alone in the night, with a demon at her back. With a deep breath and a warmth in her heart, Selphie stepped out onto the street.

"And here she is."

It was her and it wasn't her. Long blonde hair was plastered to her back and sides, and the eyes in that face held nothing for her but scorn and hate. The uniform was stained and torn. _No, it isn't her anymore._

"Your little plan went nowhere. Did you think I wouldn't know?" Her eyes glanced up into the sky and the eyes became just a little bit more angry, and Selphie realised there was something else going on that she didn't know. But all she could think of now was the person in front of her.

"Quisty…"

"You all keep calling me that like you think something will happen. Do you think that person is still in here somewhere?" The ground trembled under her feet as she spoke, and blue sparks flashed around her.

Selphie had seen Quistis angry before, Blue magic let loose during the Second War. She didn't want to feel those eyes going through her, but even now she wanted to hope. "Yes."

"You will be a warning to the rest." And those eyes looked into Selphie's own, and the air warped between them.

_I'm sorry Quisty._

Fire exploded between them and Selphie shielded her eyes as blazing fire filled the space between them. She caught a shocked expression on Quis…on Imalia's face as the fire blazed a trail through the air, sizzling where the rain poured down on it. But instead of going out under the rain's assault the blaze only grew, forming and shaping around itself. Selphie felt something inside her drain out, just a little bit, as the flames ran together and became a hulking beast between them, and Ifrit snarled in anger. _I'm so sorry._

"You…you _dare!_" Blue tendrils flashed around her and out onto the street like whips, scorching and breaking what they touched as Imalia faced down the monstrous GF without fear.

Selphie's hand shook only a little as she pointed up at her older sister, and Ifrit roared in response and challenge. "_GET HER!_" She felt the fire coursing through her own body, magic she hadn't used since the Second War.

They leapt.

* * *

><p>Laguna shook his head. "I wish we could do more. Seems like we're just sitting back here while these kids fight our wars."<p>

They looked out of the windows, the rain pouring past them over the steel rooftop and into the ocean. At this distance they could only see outlines: hulking stone edifices where some Dollet towns rose above others, flashes and lights coming from up and down the sides of the mountain it was built into as heavy ordinance was fired off in both directions. Every minute or so a red fiery comet would screech through the air above them, followed by a white blue faster than they could keep track of. Even as they watched, tendrils of red and white bloomed halfway up the labyrinth of stone. Thin sapphire tentacles reached out and sparked and where blue met red the air distorted and warped. At this distance they were no more than hair-thin wires, but to be seen from this distance they must have been huge. Kiros had been there when they had went past Quistis' room and unsealed the Vault, and he'd felt the _power_ inside that place surge out as Tilmitt had taken the fiery demon inside her mind. Now they were down there, tearing the city apart while he and his oldest friend stood outside looking in. Laguna had wanted to be there, but Kiros had eventually convinced him with the argument that he personally would knock him the hell out if he tried to sneak onboard a landing craft.

_Such a waste._ "Sins of the fathers," Kiros said in reply. They'd had plenty of time to think about it, as Irvine and Selphie had went about planning and herding and dividing up the Garden forces into something that would be able to fight an uphill battle against superior numbers, all in a pouring rain and against forces they had only the barest handle on.

_Such a god damned waste._ A madman trying to force an armageddon on the world, to meet the family that had been snatched away from him by a dead tyrant, aided and abetted by a twisted half-woman created out of fear of that same tyrant, and supported by a sister created out of wistful memories and the body of a woman he had known and respected. Kiros, Laguna and Ward had spent years of their lives trying to eradicate Sorcery from their world, and now like a zombie here it was again, crawling from the grave to devour them again.

"Seems like no matter how hard we run from it the past catches up with us eventually." He sighed and held the locket around his neck absentmindedly. Kiros knew whose pictures were inside, but figuring the soldier would work himself around to it one day, he'd never commented on it. Until today.

"Go talk with your son, old man." There were two pictures there. A raven-haired woman with a luminous smile, and on the opposite side, folded, opened up an re-folded so many times it was almost falling apart, a photo taken of seven smiling young people, with one in the centre. The very image of his mother and father.

Laguna sighed. "Yeah." He looked out over the ocean as the red and white streamed past. But this time fire didn't bloom from only its engines and cannon. Now the Ragnarok, hull pitted and broken, leaking oils and shedding metal, smashed into the fields next to Dollet's mountain with a shockwave and sound loud enough to be heard over the storm. The white shape danced over the form triumphantly, beams of energy lancing down into the engines and guns in a fiery _coup d'état_, before leaving the fallen shape and slowly, almost leisurely floating back into the city, where it sank into the maze of the town and vanished from their sight.

"God I wish we could be there."

Something told Kiros the old man would get his wish, one way or another.


	39. Faith

The air split and thunder ran through the air where they connected. Magical fire versus a cold nothing tinted with blue, and where the two powers met the air twisted and buckled as Ifrit's flames fought to gain purchase on the nothingness and burn it, even as the Blue energy lanced around and through the red-and-gold sea searching for a place to cut. Neither side could find a way to kill the other and Imalia cursed as she danced backward as a stray gout flew over and above her and lanced down to where she was standing. The cobblestone smoked and melted where it touched and she caught a vague glimpse of something red and furred behind the flames, before something at the edge of her vision made her turn, and she barely got her guard up in time.

Tilmitt's steel rods bounced from the hastily formed shield and she felt her defence creak. The brat was using the magic contained within her to reinforce her own attacks as well as manifest the beast still trying to get through the tendrils of her power. She didn't have time to think about that though as Selphie came forward to attack, feet splashing through the puddles that hissed as the fire touched them.

"Surrender, please!"

_Stupid girl._ The steel batons whirled through the air but the SeeD wasn't trying to kill her, that much was clear. She held up a hand and had a second's pity as she looked within herself for her Blue magic and channelled it out. It wasn't hard to find anymore. It flowed just under her skin like water. Selphie must have felt it too because the young girl hesitated an inch away, but instead of backing off like Leonhart had done at Timber she jumped forward, and Imalia found herself driven back as a flurry of blows rained against her, shield hissing and sparking where the GF's junctioned magic hit her own and the rain between.

"_It doesn't have to be this way! This isn't you!"_ Selphie shouted over the rain.

Imalia was driven back as the girl pleaded at her in the rain. Far in the distance she could hear the sounds of gunfire, and minutes ago had been running through the city when she had seen the roar and fire of the Ragnarok as it had ploughed through the sky to the ground, smoke and flame coming from its underbelly (_attagirl Almas_, she thought with a smile). She wanted to get down there, go to the help of her Sorceress, but this...this naive _child_ and her pet demon sat in her way. "Whateve- _whoever_ you people want from me, you're never going to find!"

"That can't be true!" was the answer shouted back as they weaved their way through the fire and razor-sharp edges that covered the street, steam billowing from the ground where rain met superheated stone. Imalia could see the fire-beast furious and bleeding as it slowly forced its way through the maze of cutting air she had set in its way. She had little time. Her ward was down there, and she needed to be close to her. She lowered her hands, and Selphie flinched backwards before realising it wasn't some new attack.

Imalia panted as she looked across the ruined street at the SeeD. She hadn't realised how much the fight had taken out of her until she stopped. "What…do you people want…from me?" she asked, half in anger and half in exasperation.

"I want my big sister back."

_Goddamn it all._ "That person is gone. She was never real." She glanced to her side. Ifrit had stopped as its master spoke. She wondered how fast she would need to be, to get past it without having to fight it. Probably faster than she could manage, at the moment.

"You're wrong." Selphie looked just as tired, and was that just rain in her eyes, or something more? "Quisty was a bossy know-it-all, she always thought she knew better than anyone else. She liked the colour red, and she always had a soft spot for Zell although she never told anyone. She-"

"Shut up."

"She loved her job even though she didn't like some of the people in it, and she always knew the right thing to say, and she was always there when we needed-

"Shut _UP!"_

The words came out like a second deluge in the rain. "She had a family that she loved and who loved her back. She had someone she loved more than anyone else, and when they were taken apart that person went crazy looking for her. Xu-

Her anger skidded to a half before she could scream at the girl again. _XU!_ That name, _that name_ again. "Who was Xu?"

Selphie stopped her tirade. She hesitated before she answered. When she did there was something off about the voice, like it was looking through a dream. "You were in love, and you were perfect together."

_Don't get distracted, you can't afford that. Not now. Almas is down there, Almas needs you. She needs her _Knight. But something held her back for a moment, when she realised Selphie Tilmitt had fallen silent. "Is he still alive?"

"_She_ is."

_She? Was I that different? _She took a breath, and she spoke without really meaning to. In her mind she could still see that last empty book, the name of the thing that had stubbornly refused to leave her mind. At least now she had an answer. She calmed herself and reached inside for the power she knew was there. She wouldn't be stopped here. "Tell Xu to move on." Selphie opened her mouth to reply, but Imalia was faster.

She threw everything she had into it, and the world splintered. Both of them lost their footing as the street underfoot cracked into a dozen huge chunks and shifted wildly, water cascading across them as the entire length of the highway buckled as if in an earthquake. But she was ready for it, and the other two were not. As Selphie reeled back, hands pin-wheeling as she fought to stay upright, Imalia struck. It wasn't the fatal blow she had expected, as something pulled herself back at the last second. Instead of her head being sheared clean off Selphie was merely flung aside as something hard and blue slammed against her skull like a truck. The SeeD slumped to the street as Imalia ran past her. Ifrit roared in fury but it went for its master instead of its opponent, and she was gone before it could turn its attention back to her. She ran out into the night, down towards her Sorceress, Selphie's last words to her ringing in her head.

_She's already here, why don't you tell her yourself?_

* * *

><p>"What the <em>hell<em> are they doing down there?"

Kettil watched as Morden paced nervously. He had been with the man long enough to separate the public from the private but even so he was still surprised at how worried he looked. Then he realised why. "Imalia will take care of her."

His master (and friend?) waved a hand impatiently as he paced in front of the huge windows that looked down on the city. Offering a view to rival a gods, now they were drenched in rain and Kettil could only make out rough and blurred details through them. There was a fire raging through the city halfway up the path, where minutes ago a huge rumble had travelled halfway through the palace and the fire had been doused as the masonry fell around it. The sister's work, that. He still didn't know what he felt about that. He had known of Quistis Trepe of course even before this whole thing had started, who hadn't? But the woman that had gone into the white-walled room had been nothing like the woman that came out. She reminded him of her brother. Imalia Aimsland was an angry young woman. Even as she took care of Almas like a mother doting over an only child he could sense that fury still in there. He'd been there when Morden had used his bloodline's meagre powers to pass on what memories he could. It seemed that she had gotten his emotions as well. An ice-queen with a heart of thorns.

_And yet you gave Tyynes that GF back. Now why did you do that old man?_

He hadn't been sure at the time and he still wasn't now, except that he had been skulking in the shadows when Quistis Trepe had me with Alec Nuo, back when Morden was still pretending to be a minder to the noblemen's children. Something in that smile had woken up a painful memory in him, that had demanded he look and see.

_And you didn't want that smile to die entirely, did you, you sentimental fool._

"When we're this close…"

Morden was muttering into the glass, and suddenly Kettil didn't want to be there. He was a soldier, not a bodyguard. If all of SeeD was really down there he needed to be there as well. The Sorceress and her Knight were already out there and fighting – and fighting well, judging from the ruined streets and the flaming corpse of the Estharian airship – and if anything happened to either of them everything they had worked for would be at risk.

_And then everything you've done, the bodies in the streets and burning towns, would all be for nothing, wouldn't it? All these years you've kept up with him by telling yourself none of it will matter in the end, when Time Compression brings about this promised perfect world it will all be wiped away. If Morden fails here all those ghosts will come back and demand answers, and you'll have none to give._

_Her ghost, most of all._

"I could go down there, assist Imalia in-"

"Do it," Morden replied instantly.

He bowed out without another word, leaving the man to his worries. Not that he didn't feel them as well. Kettil had followed Morden across deserts and wasted lands, had killed in the name of the mad dream they both shared. But his own were a dull smouldering fire compared to the raging blaze in the Cult leader's heart. It had been the same for as long as they had known each other, even when they had first met. Morden Aimsland had been a penniless beggar with nothing except a flickering ember of power and a giant charisma, and Kettil had been an aimless wandering blade. Whatever power Morden had had worked well that day, because he'd picked him out of the crowd and without a thought for the knife in Kettil's hand reached for the locket around is neck and brought it out into the light. Kettil would have killed him then, but for the words that the intense younger man had spoken to him.

_We can make it right again._

He had explained quietly later that night, and Kettil had been Morden's man ever since. Now he pushed through the door – the same door that Tyynes and the boy had exited from earlier that evening – and walked out into the pouring rain. He could see all the way down the mountaintop city, until rubble blocked the street, and sighed. He walked without any evident haste or worry as he slipped away from the main streets and into the shadows. Somewhere down the hill would be enemies, and that was all the knowledge he needed. One hand unconsciously went to the locket still around his neck, rested over his heart. He'd felt it, for half a second maybe, when the Sorceress had attempted her ultimate magic. For one half-instant he had felt familiar arms around his neck and a pair of emerald eyes looking into his own and smiling. He'd gladly die to have the rest of that moment.

He'd certainly kill.

* * *

><p>The fire of the Ragnarok burned against the night, the some billowing up into the air as she hovered there serenely staring down at the wreckage. The occupants had already run off into the night but she had been too distracted to finish them off. Something pricked and teased at her mind like a needle jabbed into her flesh, and as she sat there above the wreckage she looked off across the horizon. Something was out there, she could feel it. She wondered where Imalia was. She knew all the stories about Sorceresses and their Knights, but somehow the link between the two of them felt…tenuous. Like a piece of molten glass that could stretch infinitely but becoming ever more brittle and delicate as it cooled. In the last few days she hadn't dared go too far from her guardian for fear it might snap and shatter entirely. But tonight she had floated above the city looking down when the airship had roared through the sky above her, and without thinking she had given chase, ignoring all the warnings Imalia had given to her.<p>

"_ALMAS!"_

The voice came up from the ground, barely a whisper by the time it reached her through the pouring rain. She shivered in the sodden robes a she touched down lightly to see her Knight. "Imalia I-"

Imalia knelt down beside her. "Are you alright?"

Almas had never known Quistis Trepe, but any SeeD would have recognised the worried expression on her face; a student in trouble. The young Sorceress nodded. "I'm fine."

They would have noticed the quick mood-swings as well. "Are you insane! Chasing off after this toy when you don't know what's out there?" Sapphire eyes blazed underneath the soaking-wet blonde hair. "We have to get back to the palace, we don't know if-"

She was sick of it. "I'm fighting." She stood there in the rain, the drops sparking and hissing where they brushed against her translucent wings and faced down her Knight.

Imalia sighed. She seemed distracted, not like her usual self at all. She ran a hand through her hair aimlessly, sending water to scatter on the ground below. The storm showed no signs of moving on, and the wind was still picking up. When she had been chasing the Ragnarok she had felt it's pull at her, and there were no birds in the sky at all. "Almas there are people out here…out here in the streets, that you really don't want to meet."

Almas's fists clenched at the thought. She knew better than Imalia thought, her mind wandering back to the fury that had been on the woman's face. "That means we can finish all this _now!_ Kinneas and Tilmitt and Dincht and Xu and- _ow!"_

"I'm sorry," Imalia said quickly, her hand coming off Almas's shoulder where it had suddenly pressed hard enough to leave a mark on the sodden robe. "I'm sorry." It only took a second but the young Sorceress caught the look of shock and confusion. "Where did you hear that name?" Imalia stared down at Almas. "And how do you know she's in the city?"

Almas flinched under the force of that gaze. Even though the pair were standing next to a flaming pyre the cold somehow seemed to thread its way through the fire and caress her. "Kettil told me," she lied, and hoped the lie would stick.

No such luck. "Almas…" Imalia said, with just a hint of annoyance creeping into her voice.

She spilled it all, and just watched as her Knight's face went through what seemed like half a dozen expressions before finally settling on something like disbelief and anger. She knew it was only anger out of worry for her, but that didn't make it any better. When she was done unravelling her story she looked up at Imalia, expecting furious recriminations. Instead she got…nothing. The silence seemed to stretch the time out as Imalia see stared down at her – or maybe through her – before finally…

"Almas, I need you to promise me you'll go right back to the palace and wait for me there."

A feeling of sudden dread began to creep up her back and wrap its fingers around her throat. It almost hurt to ask; "Aren't you coming back too?" She wanted to be near her, _needed_ to be near her. They were Sorceress and Knight weren't they?

Imalia looked past Almas, back in the city. The gunfire had moved up now, fire blazing a path through half the city, encroaching on the outer edges of the more upscale neighbourhoods. The storm continued its ceaseless pounding of the city, daylight was hours away and still Almas could feel that faint tugging at the back of her mind. It pulled her attention out towards the sea, to the south. She could have sworn she was being watched, and neither the old blank slate she had been or the new Sorceress she had become was used to that feeling. She shivered.

Imalia shook her head. "I can't go back with you right now, I have to go help the others."

"Let me help. They're my people too."

Imalia shook her head and when she spoke the confusion in her voice was gone. She was the teacher again. "You're their queen, their angel. They need to know you're safe. You're their great hope, you can't even _think_ about letting them down. Please, trust me."

Almas thought back, as far as she could. Past the new emotions that Imalia had given her, past Morden's breaking of Nerva's hold over her. Past body-guarding Dollet's royal family as a silent wraith, seeing everything but being nothing. Back so far her memories were a mist of fog and glass. White-walled rooms and blank faces peering down at her as she lay helpless. She couldn't remember clearly those times. Didn't want to. Sometimes Imalia smiled at her and her sight would flash back into that fog. White-suited men smiling at her, but not _at_ her.

_You will be our greatest triumph._

_No. She wouldn't do that to me. She loves me. She never would. _She shivered. "Alright, alright. I'll go back."

Imalia smiled. "Good. Go find my brother and keep him safe, he's probably more worried than I am."

"Where are you going to go?" Almas asked the blonde woman's retreating back.

Imalia didn't even turn as she headed off, back into the fire and rain of the city. "To bring an end to something.

Almas stood alone by the fire of the Ragnarok, unsure of what to do. One part of her wanted to follow her. It was a part that Nerva had trained into her over long and grey-filled years; the loyal and silent guard that followed without thought or complaint. Another part, a much older part from the mists of Galbadia's white rooms, wanted to run and hide from the battlefield and back into the safety of the rose garden's room. She ignored them both, and listened to a third part. Its name was Almas Jordin and although it was still shiny and new, it was a part that was entirely her own. Her Knight was in pain, that much was clear. The SeeDs invading her – invading _their_ – home, who wanted to stop them from their beautiful task. Among them were the ones that wanted to take Imalia away from them.

_I shouldn't have listened to Mr Kettil. I should have killed that Xu woman right there._ The thought of her Knight (_HER_ Knight, no-one else's, _NO-ONE ELSES!_) made her angrier than she could explain. That, in the end, was what made up her mind.

She took to the air once more, and went hunting.

* * *

><p>His body moved on automatic, legs and hands moving and striking out almost without his conscious knowledge as he made his way through the city. The SeeD in front of him fell with a choked-off scream as a knife slashed through his torso, and Kettil was already past him before the others realised he was there. One was fast enough to turn and see him, but not fast enough to swing his weapon around. He fell like the rest.<p>

He stood there in the rain and carnage breathing hard, surrounded by blood and bodies. _It's getting worse._ He'd expected a clear run down to the docks, but he'd barely went out of sight of the palace before he met the frontline of SeeD mercenaries advancing by inches up the mountain roads. From here he could look down into the city and see a stone maze, wrapped in chaos. Smoke from a dozen burning buildings fought its way up through the rain to cover the horizon in a dull smog, and Kettil could see _something_ near the dockyards that roared and cried as buildings sunk around it. Behind it all the Ragnarok burned outside the city walls, and behind it all, out to sea, the massive shell of Balamb Garden floated on the churning waves. The entire thing looked le some hellish nightmare.

"Sir?"

He turned to see the young man address him. He must have been out of his teens but he wore the white armband and clutched a rifle in shaking hands.

"What do we do now?"

_I don't know._ He could see shadows scuttling in the darkness down the slope, and knew another man would have said _go and kill them,_ but he couldn't do it. Morden might have had no trouble ordering men to die for his cause, but Kettil had always done his own dirty work. "Fall back to the palace, tell them we're in trouble out here." He knew it was true. He'd done his share of killing today in the dark and rain. Even though they had been young, some younger by a score of years than the Faithful militia they fought, not one of the SeeDs he'd met today had backed down or surrendered. Kettil had looked into their eyes as knew; they wanted to take Dollet, they wanted it very badly.

_Is this it?_ He looked out into the rain and smoke and fire of the battle and for a moment he imagined he felt a whisper of breath at his cheek. _Is this as far as we come?_ He could feel blood dripping down from the knives in his hands and shook himself clear of that old memory. _I've come too far to back down now._ They all had.

His momentary reflection was almost the end of him. Pain flashed across his face as the small blade whirred past him, and he spun at the sound of footsteps pounding through the rain. She'd picked her moment well, and Kettil found himself in the same situation as his own victims; no time to bring out his knives, as Tyynes rushed him and threw a punch into his belly hard enough to make him see stars.

_You idiot man,_ he told himself, much more calmly than he felt as he staggered backwards, Xu's other knife flying overhead and cutting only raindrops. She must have been as surprised as he because she swung too wide, feet slipping on the cobblestones, and for a moment they found themselves free and clear as they both got their balance back. Kettil drew one of his last knives and looked across the feet that separated them, and felt a shiver. On the woman's face there was nothing except a blank determination, and she didn't say a single word. In that moment Kettil knew one of them wouldn't be walking away._ So be it._ He struck out.

It wasn't clean, or pretty. Kettil was low on tricks and halfway to collapse, and Tyynes looked like she was fighting her own exhaustion just as much as him. Their blades flashed in the darkness as each fought to get an advantage over the other, using the slippery ground to move fast or bait the other, using the shadows to hide their knife's movements or drive the opponent into a corner. Kettil felt slashes from half a dozen and more shallow cuts across his arms and torso, and Xu bled from a score of her own. Time itself seemed to slip away from him and all of his thoughts were turned away from the battle for the city that raged around them, focussed on the small circle that contained himself and the mute SeeD commander. Half a dozen times he thought he had her, only for her to move around his knife like she had seen it coming minutes ago.

Finally they both stood panting on the stone cobbles of some back ally, rainwater and blood mixing in the streets below them to trickle down the hill towards the rest of the battle. He wiped his eyes clean and tasted iron in his mouth from a cut above his cheek, spat into the street. Still the women stayed silent.

_She's damn good,_ he thought to himself. He'd fought SeeDs before. Had tangled with them anonymously on a couple of occasions, seen Dincht fight in Centra at the start of the whole mess. But where Dincht's style had been chaotic and random, keeping his enemy guessing at where the next move would land, Tyynes fought like she was playing Chess. He'd block a strike and find his knife-arm now in absolutely the wrong place as she came after him. Kettil used his blades like they were water, Xu used hers like a machine punching holes in paper. _Finish this now or you'll die here old man. _Breathing deeply to recover as best he could, he backed off as she came for him again, and they fell back into the deadly ballet. In the end it wasn't superior skill or technique or stamina that ended the fight, but another force that intervened. Stab and slash and block all weaved together until he had no sense of anything outside himself. Not of the rain that pounded down onto and around them, not of the screams and gunfire from the city that surrounded them. Certainly not of the splash and _smack_ of feet running on stone.

He struck out again, Xu's knife already down and deflecting a slash that would have cut through her torso and sent her to the ground. She punched upward, bringing his knife with her, and for a second they were pushing against each other as he fought to pull free as her other hand came around and tried to crush his hand onto her blade. Pure luck and only that meant that he had his back to the new arrival, and Tyynes was the first to see. He didn't realise what it was, only saw Xu's eyes widen suddenly and the pressure on his knife lessen. Only by an inch, but it was enough. He heard the voice shouting-

"_Kettil!"_

-like the person was miles away, using the last of his energy to force her suddenly-hesitant arm away and drive his arms up as hard as he could. Her resistance vanished as his blade sliced through clothing and flesh and found its mark. She blinked just once, as Kettil felt blood flowing down his arm. For half a second there was hurt on her face, but not at him. She wasn't evening looking at him, and as he stepped back she collapsed to the ground as he let go and twisted away. Xu fell to the ground and lay there in the pouring rain staring into nothing, Kettil's knife buried in her neck.

Still at no point had she made a sound.

_Thank god, thank god._ He fell to his knees and coughed, supporting himself with one arm as the intruder that had saved his life walked up to him. He felt his torso wracked with pain and he heaved violently onto the street.

"Can you stand?" Imalia asked.

Using the walls and floors as balance he hoisted himself cautiously to his feet. He felt pain lance through him where Tyynes had cut him. "What's happening?"

"We're losing the city, I'm going back to the palace." She glanced down at the motionless body, and Kettil got the disquieting feeling it wasn't to his rescue she had been running. "Is this her?"

"Xu?" He coughed blood and winced. "Yes."

Imalia kneeled down by the fallen SeeD, clumps of her sodden blonde hair brushing across her face. Kettil leaned on the wall to catch his breath and just watched her stare at Xu like a teacher at some badly-dissected subject.

Imalia glanced back to him with surprise on her face. "She's still alive."

_So fix that, _Kettil wanted to say. He was dead on his feet and could see stars in his eyes. Now that his mind was coming back to earth he could hear the sounds of gunfire were now much, much closer than they had been. He shivered – only a little, but still – as a primeval roar sounded through the air, shaking dust from the walls. He picked up his knife from the ground and reached out to hand it to his superior, but instead of taking it she turned back. After a second blue light enveloped the square, and as the mercenary watched the blood stopped flowing from the wound at Xu's throat as something invisible and formless was pressed against it, distorting the skin but stopping her life from flowing out of her. _Are you crazy?_

She turned back to him. "I'm taking her to the palace." Her eyes were sparking blue, the way they always did when used her power, and he was in no mood to argue anyway. Wincing, and with needles shooting through half his body, he began to follow after her. He looked back only once at the city. Garden was closer to the shoreline now, the sea between it and the city churning as boats fought to the storm to land and disgorge more SeeDs onto the beach. Lights from fire and torches scattered on the lower ends of the city, and the gunfire was moving closer and closer. SeeD had the city. Kettil cursed quietly as he ran. He set off after Imalia, back to the palace, and their last line of defences.

Neither of them noticed the shape hovering above them quietly, wings vibrating with fury, and eyes blazing with a cold white light.


	40. Everything Flows

She stared down at the dying woman on the table and watched as the man – the closest thing left they had to a doctor – operated at blinding speed to save her.

"What are you doing?" Morden asked, dangerously quiet.

"I'm not sure yet," she replied. She wasn't. She was flying blind with only her instinct to guide her. She'd left Almas at the wreckage of the Ragnarok to find just this person, to find some kind of closure of what lone book of her old self, hoping to tear it out of her once and for all. Instead she'd arrived too late, the job that should have been hers left to Kettil. Instead of finishing it right there and then she'd looked down at the dying woman, this Xu Tyynes who had loved her false self and who her false self had, apparently, loved back. Instead of using her power to end the woman's misery she'd used it to bring her to their home, and now watched as the harried and tired man fought to save her life. One look at who she had been carrying in and the guard at the door had scurried away. Her brother had arrived soon after.

"We can't afford this, dear sister." He said it with only kindness and tolerance in his voice. He must have been furious.

_I need to say something. I need to tear out this final page of Quistis Trepe._ "I know what I'm doing."

The kindness was replaced with just a little steel. "Look out of those windows and say that again."

She didn't need to. Fire and smoke crept up the hill towards them. A few shells from the Garden forces had almost hit the palace. Dollet was separated into two; a SeeD-controlled city that smouldered gently as fires were put out and prisoners rounded up, and the remaining ground that the Faith held. The line that separated the two was filled with fire where the forces met, and that line was steadily creeping upwards. Kinneas and his resistances forces struck out from the shadows with lethal accuracy, and Tilmitt roamed the line at-will with Ifrit's protection, leaving only wreckage and bloodied bodies in her wake. "And what do you suggest?" She could feel the power, the Blue magic, surging inside her like a boiling cauldron.

"It's time."

"No," she said instantly, and rounded on her brother. "It's not necessary. We-"

"We've done all we can here. You've prepared her as best you can. She's _ready._" The glint in his eyes wasn't reflected fire from outside the windows. Imalia looked at her brother and saw how close he was to breaking, that cold and confident persona worn down by the night.

"Let me go out again. I can-"

"Sister, you-"

"It's not over yet. We can reinforce the areas we still have strike out where they're weak. I can-"

"_IMALIA!" _She stopped her torrent of excuses and let the silence between them stretch out. Her brother looked at her with curiosity. "Why are you hesitating like this? This is _it_, sister. The culmination of my – of _our – _work. Why are you so attached to staying in this world when the new one is _so close?"_

_I wanted to live in this one a little bit, first._ "What if it doesn't work?"

"It _will work_," Morden seethed. "Hyne's sake we've come so far, don't stop now just because of some _girl_ you never even knew!"

She put a hand on her brother's shoulder. "Fine, fine," she said soothingly. "Almas is coming back and we'll…we'll talk about it then. Just…just give me this, alright?" She smiled at the bundle of nerves and mad dreams she called a brother. But were they mad if they were right? "If none of this will matter, just let me speak."

Morden hesitated a second before replying. "Fine." He stalked off without another word. Irvine looked around at Kettil, and then around to the other Faithful still remaining. They all looked nervous, glancing around between the outside and the body of the woman on the table and fingering the guns at their sides. She made her decision. "Is it safe to move her?" She listened to the man's nervous reply. "We're going somewhere more secure. Bring her." Finally, she turned to the nervous young guards. None of them were over thirty. "Defend as best you can, then surrender."

One of the least afraid managed to begin a complaint; "But-"

_Morden would be furious with me._ "Don't throw your life away without cause. I…your Archangel wouldn't want it." That did it. The man saluted, almost vibrating with pride. She checked to make sure the doctor and his patient were following, then left the room. On the way out she grabbed a knife and put it into her belt. The one Tyynes had been using against Kettil. She could feel its heft in her palm as she went deeper into the palace, away from the noise and chaos. To the one place she could really _think. _There she would at least have a chance to talk with this fragment of a false past.

One way or the other, she'd cleanse herself of this mess.

* * *

><p>"Asleep on the job again Kinneas?"<p>

Irvine looked up at the man addressing him and snorted. "Did you join SeeD and outrank me suddenly, old man?"

Laguna reached down a hand and Irvine grasped it. "It's over?" he asked as he hoisted the gunman up again. Kiros and a squad of Esthar soldiers stood behind the man, looking around for targets. Irvine could have told them their worry was for nothing. The palace gates were in front of them. If he looked hard enough he could pick out shapes moving inside the fire-scorched and shelled building. "We do good work, huh?"

Laguna nodded as he stared up at the edifice. "Not bad. Little rough though." He shivered. The rain had already soaked through the man's coat and Kiros was clearly deeply unhappy with him being this close to the fighting, but Irvine knew it wouldn't matter to the man. Laguna wanted to be there, at the end.

They turned as suddenly the cold – if not the rain – was wiped away and a blast of heat hit them. Ifrit slammed onto the cobbles behind them like a miniature bomb, Selphie stepping lightly around the beast as it began to shimmer, turn formless as it went back to whatever space the GF occupied when not corporeal. The cold wind as if in protest at this momentary intrusion whipped around them instantly. The storm was hours old and showed no signs of abating. "We're clear," Selphie said to Laguna and saluting. But she was already at Irvine's side before she addressed the national president, and Irvine felt a surge of affection for his lover through his exhaustion. "The city's ours, from the docks to the hills."

"Then let's end it," Laguna said quietly, and moved past Irvine to stand at the head of the hastily-assembled blockade. The SeeDs manning the barricade didn't even turn to see him, just kept staring ahead like good soldiers. "What would you need to storm this place?"

Kiros shrugged and started reeled off a list. Irvine beat him to it. "A whole lot of people Mr President." He laid it out for the man. Fighting a dedicated and fanatical enemy, in tight enclosed spaces they didn't know the layout of. Fighting through all those defences the enemy had had hours to place. They had taken Dollet in a single night but the cost had been horrendous. The ramshackle triages and hospitals they had set up for the wounded were overflowing as fast as they could be put up. Trying to take the palace corridor by corridor and room by room would be a nightmare.

Laguna stared up at himself from the puddles in the ground, distorted and warped as more raindrops fell to add themselves to the ocean underfoot. "I don't want to ask you to do that, but…" He trailed off, and didn't have to say anymore. Everyone fighting, from the docks to the hilltop, had seen traces of it. Twisted stone and metal where something unearthly and powerful had passed through and ruined it. Shapes and colours in the sky, passing over faster than the eye could see before fading. The burning wreckage of the Ragnarok that still sputtered out sparks and flames onto the fields outside the city. Above all that, the confusion and pain and psychic trauma of the abortive Time Compression that was only days in the past.

There was a countdown going on inside the palace ahead of them. But while they all heard the ticks, none of them could see the clock-face.

"There's another way."

Irvine and Laguna turned to see the new arrivals. Nida walked shakily up the hill towards them, one arm wrapped around…

"Zell!" Selphie said with joy.

The martial artist smiled back. "Hey Sephy. Been a while. Awkward place for a reunion huh?" Other shapes moved behind him, and Fujin and Raijin walked out of the rain to meet the others at the barricade. "Looks like the whole gang's here."

"Are you okay, should you be up?" Selphie asked.

"What do you have for us Nida?" Kiros asked, bringing them back to the present again. _Time for welcomes later._

Nida shrugged off Zell's arm and saluted. "There's a small entrance we can use to get into the palace sir. Me and Ms Tyynes found it when we were…when we had to leave the palace."

Laguna caught something in the young man's voice but chose to ignore it. "Where?" Behind him, Kiros was already trying to draw the attention of the others, and they followed Nida as he led them around the huge iron fence of the palace, to the steel door they had been shoved from only half a day before. To Nida it felt like weeks.

Laguna nodded and ran a hand down the smooth metal surface like it was a holy object. "This is it." He turned to Irvine. "We can't get an army in through here. A small squad maybe."

The cowboy shared a look with the others. He had known it would lead up to this somehow. "Keep your men back sir, we'll handle the rest."

Laguna smiled sadly, like he had been expecting exactly the same thing. "I know you will."

* * *

><p>"I expected them to be here you know."<p>

They stared at the twisted metal, the remains of the door they had blasted through. Kiros had gone to the front of the building to begin a diversion. It wasn't much, but then they didn't _need_ much.

"Who, sir?" Nida asked. He'd pleaded to be allowed to go in with the others, but Fujin and Selphie had overruled him. Selphie had been polite about it but Fujin hadn't bothered to lie to save his feelings: _You're too weak and too tired. Recover yourself out here, wait for Xu and tell her where we went. Soothe Shiva if you can._ The last was a tall order, and one he had no idea how to begin. He knew what GFs did inside people's skulls and the thought of one there made him shiver. What was worse Shiva felt those feelings too, and was sulking about it. He had a pounding headache, and no end in sight. He wished Xu were here.

"Squall and Rinoa." Laguna stared into the black void of the palace interior like a lost man, and Nida had no idea what to say. Luckily for him Kiros chose that moment to come back around the corner. The palace was ringed on all sides now, Esthar soldiers and SeeDs creating a barrier around the final bastion of the Faithful. The city had ben pacified, put down and the cultists put down. Now all that remained was the men and women inside that building. They would be the die-hards, the leadership.

"It's done," Kiros said with not a little satisfaction in his voice. Kiros hated Sorceress cults, and dismantling this one had been a pleasure. The hard work would come later as they looked at what was left of the nation and see whether it needed help getting back on its feet. For now though the old black man and his boss were soldiers again. It was simpler than being a politician. "They'd be here if they could," he said.

"I wonder. Nida, could you give us a minute?"

"What's on your mind Mr President?" Kiros asked after Nida had vanished out of sight down the hill, towards if not warm then at least dry shelter. The expression his face made his thoughts clear; _is this really the time for this?_ "What did you want the boy to hear?"

"I'm worried about Rinoa." The man stared down at his feet and kicked at the water like a sullen schoolboy. Kiros recognised it, and knew he'd have to tease these thoughts from his commander's mind.

Kiros said the first thing that came into his mind. "Worried about what they're doing in Esthar?" He stopped speaking for a moment as his brain ran through the thought to its conclusion. "You think Rinoa might be setting up a Sorceress empire over in Centra? _Rinoa?_" He couldn't even begin to imagine it, and said so.

Laguna looked up from the soaking-wet ground to his oldest friend. "I just can't shake it from my head Kiros. With what Odine told us…god, can you imagine it?"

"Squall wouldn't let that happen." Kiros said forcefully. "Don't think about it."

"What if we _need_ to think about it?" Laguna stared up at the towering edifice of the palace, but he wasn't seeing it. He was seeing Adel staring down at him, the first and only time he had ever been face-to-face with the tyrant. Even just keeping eye-contact had been a struggle. Like there had been hands around his neck choking the life from him just by meeting that gaze.

Kiros tried to de-rail Laguna's thoughts before they went any further. He wiped rainwater from his eyes and gestured down at the city. "Let's concentrate on the problems we have now, alright?" It seemed ludicrous, standing there outside the palace walls talking as if they were back in Esthar, while below them a city burned.

Laguna snorted as he did the same. "Just one more clean-up job. Maybe this time we'll just say the hell with it and take over. I'll have Esthar and you can take Galbadia and Dollet. Fifty-fifty split."

"God, what have I been telling you all these years?"

That did the trick. Laguna burst out laughing as soldiers turned in alarm. He waved them off and sighed as he stared down at the city.

Kiros sighed and clapped a hand on his old sergeant's shoulder. "You shouldn't make up new problems out of thin air old friend. It's not good for you."

_We have enough already._

* * *

><p>"You're awake."<p>

She heard the voice through the endless mists of her sleep. Tried to open her eyes and find out who talking to her but something hard and heavy was holding her down. She twisted and gasped in shock as a blinding stab of pain ran through her neck.

"Don't move so much, it was a very close thing."

She knew the voice. She wanted to keep her eyes closed then. Keep her eyes closed and tell herself it had all been some horrible nightmare, and the warm faint lights above her were from the ceiling of Quistis- of _their_ room, back in Balamb Garden. Wanted to keep her eyes closed because she knew better, knew what she would see if she opened them, and who was talking at her. Hyne help her but even now she wanted to be a coward. But the SeeD inside herself wouldn't let her, and Xu opened her eyes.

It wasn't what she had been expecting. She lay half-sat and half-leaning on some ludicrously old and expensive-looking chair. It had obviously been a study at some point in its life. Bookshelves lined the curving walls, exotic titles even she didn't recognise. A warm fire blazed away somewhere behind her, throwing light and heat into the room that was immediately sucked past her and away, where a massive hole gaped in the roof, spilling the storm into what could have been a refuge. It served well enough though, so show the other person in the room. Imalia Aims-

_No. Don't call her that or you're just admitting it's true._

Quistis sat in a chair much like her own, one leg thrown carelessly over the other and hands knotted in one knee, idly holding a knife Xu recognised as her own. That long blonde hair hung listlessly, hanging past cool blue eyes that looked into hers with curiosity. She sat close enough to touch. Xu tried to speak but when she opened her mouth it felt like someone was dragging a razorblade across her neck. She mind flashed back and she realised why. Felt her own arm weaken from hesitating when she saw Quisty's eyes and felt Kettil's blade sliding up into…_enough._ She tried again. "…sty."

The woman ran a finger across the edge of the knife as she just stared back, those blue eyes giving nothing away. " I've found out…I've been told a lot…about you. About us." She played with the knife in her hands like she didn't know what to do with it. Or her. "I remember your name, for some reason. Even though everything else was thrown out, you…you're still there. Who _are_ you?"

"Xu," she said weakly.

"But I don't know who that _is,"_ Quistis/Imalia said with mounting frustration, brushing her hair out of her eyes with a gesture Xu remembered from a hundred days and nights.

"…Loved you."

She raised her head again to look into Xu's eyes. "I don't want this. This was a bad idea," she said, and while there wasn't hostility in that voice there was something…determined. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry about your…about your situation. But that person was a prison for me, and I won't go back." Imalia/Quistis stood up, knife in hand, and walked towards Xu.

"Don't…" She raised a hand weakly to fend off the woman but she was too weak, and Imalia slipped the knife easily around her chair, slicing through the bonds that had been tying her down. "You promised…"

"What? What did I promise?"

Xu stared into her eyes with hope. "Promised me…you'd…" She stopped, as if prodding Imalia to remember the rest.

But she had no hope to give her. "That isn't me. Just…just go." She tipped her head, eyes still locked on Xu in the chair. "Your friends are coming, I think. I can hear them. Not that it will help." She took a deep breath and sighed. "I just needed to tell you. There's nothing between us now."

Xu felt a chill run through her as Imalia spoke those last words, and stood on shaky feet. Instead of moving to the door though, she took a step towards her, this woman dressed in her love's skin. "It isn't…real," she managed through the pain that throbbed in her neck and head. "You…"

But Imalia was like a rock, cold and unyielding. "Stay alive long enough and you might meet her again. Go."

She would have tried again, would have searched for something that would have worked, would have broken through that shell and reached the woman that _had to be_ still there. She simply couldn't accept that she wasn't. But Xu never had the chance, as a piercing creak sounded through the storm coming in from the patchwork roof above. It was the sound of the door opening. To Xu it was the sound of failure, as Morden Aimsland pushed himself into the room, face set in a grim expression, one hand holding his side where the dark fabric he wore was darker still, and not with rainwater. He took one look at Xu and ignored her, concentrating on his sister and hissing through gritted teeth. One sentence that for both of them drowned out the storm still raging above, and the gunfire that cracked and barked very close now.

"They're here."

* * *

><p><em>I was this close. Damnit damnit <em>damnit.

Irvine chambered another round as fast as his fingers could move as more men flung themselves from doorways and hidden corners into their way. Not even soldiers now, the cultists doing their best to be a human wall between him and his target were just clerics and boys. Even as he watched one of them fired down the thin corridor at the wall Irvine was hiding by and the gun was kicked out of his hands by the recoil. _They're just boys, _he seethed in frustration as he fired back, catching the boy in the leg and sending him crying to the ground.

He'd almost had it. He and Selphie had slammed their way through half the outer chambers as fast as they could, leaving a trail of fallen enemies behind and no warning at all. He'd pushed a door open and he'd been standing right there, barking orders at some luckless cultist. He must have caught Irvine in the corner of his eye because Morden Aimsland had turned and for one moment they had been frozen, staring into the SeeDs eyes. Something blue and furious had flashed in them and suddenly Irvine's strength had left him. If not for Selphie grabbing him by the lapels and hauling him backwards he might have died right there. He'd fired blindly, like a kid in his first day of firearms class, but he must have hit something because when Morden had left the room he'd left a trail of blood as well.

The rest had just been a case of following the trail into the depths of the palace, which was what Irvine and Selphie had been doing when the doors in front of them had opened almost en-masse and disgorged angry and stupid but very well-armed men into the corridors.

A scream sounded through the corridor was something flashed past the lines of cultists from behind. Irvine drew his gun up and stopped firing as Zell and Fujin cut through the disorganised enemy like butter, her ornate shuriken slicing through tendons and flesh as his metal knuckles broke bone. It didn't take a minute. Irvine picked himself up from the dust- and plaster-covered floor and walked the distance between them. "Any luck?"

Zell gestured down at the floor, now thick with plaster and blood where the walls had been torn apart by stray gunfire and bullets that had found their mark. "Nothing yet. You sure he came this way?"

"I'm sure." He looked down the dark corridors and shivered, just a little bit. The windows cast a pale white light into the empty space as lightning flashed in the sky, the wind pummelling at them from broken windows. Irvine could only imagine the ghosts that stalked these halls. He wondered if Quisty's was one of them. He had met Selphie at the gates of the palace and she had wrapped arms around him and whispered into his ear; _she isn't there anymore. _Not crying or upset, just a statement of fact. She had given up.

They pushed on through the inner palace, the cultists going down as fast as they popped up. They were desperate now. Irvine and Zell swept across the corridors and halls like lightning as they hunted down the rest of the palace 'guard'. Resistance members and Laguna's few Esthar bodyguards came behind, moving wounded and securing as they went, locking doors and barricading exit holes until finally Selphie broke through the last door to find…

"That's it. We're done."

There was nothing left. Irvine scanned the small room. The door they had burst through, another door that even as they spoke was smashed as Raijin strode through it like a conquering hero. The man looked at him and shrugged. _That's it?_ For the first time in the long and bloody night, Irvine's finger came off his trigger, and he relaxed.

Final confirmation came when Laguna walked into the room, Kiros and the masked Esthar soldiers coming in behind him. "Is that it?"

Irvine nodded. "Almost." He gestured at the final door. Ornate patterns and carvings on it. Laguna sighed, but Irvine didn't ask why.

"Well, time to finish this awful mess." Kiros stepped forward to stop his boss, but Laguna was already out of the man's reach, and opening the carved wooden door before anyone else could stop him. Irvine settled for going through second, and seeing…

"It's beautiful," Fujin said softly as they came through.

Even in the darkness of the storm hundreds of roses bloomed on the gardens that lined the path from the main palace to the small circular tower. Even at the dead of night there was something otherworldly about it, as the lights that lined the smooth pathway sputtered, casting off shadow and shining from the red petals before vanishing again.

Irvine was the first to see it. "Laguna get back!" he shouted as he raised his rifle again, to point at the man standing before the door of that last room. He stared down the barrel as the man called Kettil drew his knives. A useless gesture, but he felt a stab of fellowship for the man standing there alone, protecting the only place his boss could have run to. He watched as the door creaked open, and she stepped out.

"That's enough Kettil." Imalia placed a hand on the man's shoulder, and the assassin put his hands down. She looked across the rose garden at the SeeDs, and even in the darkness of the night and storm Irvine could see the dislike on her face. But not hatred. She seemed…tired. She threw a blood-covered knife onto the ground in front of her, where it landed blade-down and sunk into the ground. Irvine heard a sharp hiss of breath from behind him, from Selphie. He was about to ask what she had spotted, but he had seen it too. The knife was Xu's. He felt his finger tighten on the trigger and it took all of his willpower not to fire right there.

"You won't take one further step into here," Imalia said, and when she did it was a commandment.

"There doesn't need to be any more bloodshed," Laguna said, weaving his way between the soldiers now pointing their guns at the heart of the blonde woman, to stand next to Irvine. "Your organisation is broken. You have no-one else to help you. Surrender."

"To you? Never?" Aimsland snarled. "You took my home from me, took my _family._ Killed my Goddess and everything I believed in! You think I'd surrender to _you? _A _SeeD_? _NEVER!"_

The voice came from in front of them but not from Imalia, as her brother made his appearance. One hand clung to his side and Irvine saw the mark his bullet had found.

"Mr Aimsland," Laguna said.

"Sergeant Loire," the man replied.

"I know why you're doing this, but it's over. I'm sorry for what happened to your family, but-"

"You dare try to apologise for what you people did_?_" Even through the wound in his side Aimsland sounded confident. Like he simply had them all in the palm of his hand. Irvine was the first to look away, and the second he did so the spell fell away. He saw three battered and defeated enemies, nothing more. "For what _you_ did?"

"Adel was a monster, Morden," Laguna replied calmly. "Monsters get put down."

"Not that it helped you in the end," Aimsland replied, and he smiled as above them the sky turned white.

Almas Jordin touched down, dirty-white wings throwing colour into the rose fields like searchlights. The artificial sorceress stared across at them and this time Irvine really did feel a hint of fear. Selphie was behind him, apparently whispering to nobody, but Irvine knew she was speaking to Ifrit. Other SeeDs, those strong or good enough to channel the power of the GFs, were scattered in the palace. In seconds they could bathe this area in destructive energy, but even so Irvine felt that shiver of fear. Then Almas did the one thing he would never have expected.

Then she turned her back on them.

"Are you alright?" Her eyes stared clear into those of her Knight. One hand picked up the knife from the floor.

Imalia looked off-put, for just a moment, as she looked down at her partner. "I'm fine."

"Where is she?" Almas asked.

Morden stepped forward, eyes still locked with the SeeDs across the field of roses. "Almas we don't have time to talk about-"

"_WHERE IS SHE!"_ Almas screamed, and Morden _jumped_ backwards as sparks cascaded from the sorcerous wings, tendrils of force flying out into the garden and igniting and crushing those roses they touched.

No-one dared speak or move, as the air itself seemed to vibrate with force as Almas and Imalia talked. "She…she's inside."

"Why?" Almas asked whip-quick. "What did you want with her?"

_What do we do? What do we DO?_ Irvine thought to himself as some unseen drama played itself out in front of him. Half of him wanted to just open fire and dispose of this sudden confusion, while the other half held his trigger-finger back out of fear. He admitted it. He knew Rinoa, he'd fought Ultimecia. Even just standing in the same space as the tiny angry girl it felt like the pressure around him was unbearable. _Rinoa, Squall, where in Hyne's name ARE you?_

"I wanted to finish it," Imalia said.

Almas held a hand out, Xu's knife still held in it. "Then let's end it now." Her eyes glinted with white fire. Anger, and desperation.

Imalia took the knife but made no move to go back into the room. "Almas, I can't," she said softly.

"Why not?"

Laguna stepped forward. "We can get you help, Almas. If that's what you need. We can-"

Almas rounded on Laguna and the look of fury on her face made the president shrink back and his voice fail. Here she was again, Adel standing before him. _A corrupting madness._ She spoke one word at him, and he didn't dare disobey. "_Quiet." _Instantly she swung back, to face her hesitant Knight. "Why not?" she asked again. "Do it. Do it for me." There were tears in her eyes now, and to Imalia and Morden their world shrunk down to a small circle that contained themselves and the small being that somehow, eve through all their careful planning, was careening off the rails. "She's a SeeD, she's a monster,_" _she wailed.

Imalis just shook her head, finally. "I can't. I'm not that kind of person."

"It's because you still love her, isn't it?" Almas asked, and Irvine shivered at the lack of emotion in that voice. It was the voice of someone who had made up their mind.

"No, I-"

"Why won't you love me instead?" Almas asked.

Imalia looked down into those white eyes she could see past the overwhelming power of Sorcery to the confused and frightened little girl inside. She brushed a hand through the girl's soaked black hair. "I do love you. I'm your Knight, I-"

Almas slapped the hand away. "Not like _she _loved the other you. I felt that, I heard that. I _want_ that."

_Xu what have you done._ Irvine wanted to turn and run, grab Selphie and Zell and the others, just take off and not stop running until they were far from this place. He could taste electricity in his mouth, like some charge that was building and building and was like to burst at any second. In his entire life he had felt like this twice. One only a few days in the past. The first when he had been thrown through time and space. His hands shook.

"You can _make_ her love you." Morden stepped forward as Imalia stared at him in open-mouthed amazement. "You can do it. Make everything right in the world Almas. You know you can if you try hard enough."

Imalia looked at him in shock. "Brother, what are you-"

But he ignored her. Gently, he prised the knife from his Angel's grip and gathered her hands into his own. "You can take us there. Be strong. You know you can do it."

Lightning struck and mixed with the _crack_ of Irvine's rifle. Whether he'd fired out of seeing some chance slipping away or from simple fear he didn't know. The bullet flew straight, but never hit its target. Halfway to Morden's forehead the lump of metal slowed and sizzled, coming to a stop in mid-air like a car out of gas. It dropped out of the sky as Almas turned to look at the SeeDs. "Yes," she said.

Laguna spoke one word. He spoke it without joy or relief. Like he'd always known he would have to. "Open fire."

It might as well have been spitting into a hurricane. The garden erupted with noise as a dozen rifles and handguns spat lead towards the cultist. Half the bullets scattered harmlessly into the darkness. The other half stopped in mid-air, or boiled away to vapour, or suddenly were hammered down into the ground to form perfect circles of flattened metal as sorcery reached out and grabbed them out of the air and turned them away, or simply made them vanish.

For a second there was no sound from any of the players in the room, only the deafening thunder and rain above. Almas smiled in triumph at the SeeDs as the ground between the two cracked and splintered, tendrils of white power twisting around herself to form a shell. Wings unfurled and grew to encompass the tower as the false Sorceress let it all go, twisting space and time itself around her.

"_NO!"_ Laguna screamed into the void, but his voice was caught as it left his mouth and no-one heard it. Irvine's hand caught Selphie's and gripped on for dear life as Fujin, Zell and Raijin tried to push forward against that magic hurricane, weapons in hand.

"YES! YESSSSSS!" Morden screamed triumph into the maelstrom, wound forgotten as he looked at his perfect angel

Imalia felt dizzy, felt liquid coarse down her face where a deflected bullet hadn't been deflected enough and had grazed against her face close enough to draw blood. It felt like something was being sucked out of her, harder and faster as time and space became more and more warped. The garden around them seemed to fall apart, roses dying and reversing and turning to small buds and back again as she watched. She saw the palace itself fold away and onto itself as space twisted and warped around the winged figure. She raised a hand to try and stave off the harsh light but it did no good. She reached out trying to grasp at her Sorceress but the light around the young girl was almost burning. She closed her eyes against the glare, and the last sight Imalia caught of Almas was a beatific smiling shape caught in a whirl of off-white power, mixed with her own blue magic._ I'm sorry. I-_

Her thought was cut off, as the power swept around and through her and outwards, and true Time Compression swallowed the tower of Dollet._  
><em>

* * *

><p>The seas churned as the white wall swept over it. A white light that devoured up the sea as it rushed towards them. Where it touched land the earth twisted, turning from hard-packed desert to grassy fields to snowy tundra as time fell apart around them.<p>

Squall stared into that white light without fear. He felt the warmth of his wife's hand in his own and turned to see her smiling at him.

"This is it," Rinoa said.

"This better work," Seifer muttered.

Squall ignored the man and looked into his true love's eyes. "I trust you. Always."

Rinoa smiled at him, then turned to look at the advancing wall of magic that now researched to the top of the sky. On the plains below the tents of her followers were swallowed up. Most had left already, told to go back to their families, but some stayed and just watched as Time Compression flowered over them. "Then let's go, together."

The wall swept over them., and although Squall felt pressure forcing him away at the same time the world around him dissolved. He caught flashes and glimpses of other times as the desert he stood on turned to asphalt, turned to grass, turned to sky and then to nothing at all. He saw himself in the clouds as a boy and as an old man. He felt a presence beside them, an angry thought that seemed to tease and pry at his grip to separate him from Rinoa. He pushed the thought away and it fell away, and the last thought Squall heard was Rinoa's. Still by his side, still unchanged. Wings of pure white flowed behind her. His angel.

_Together._

Together they watched the world fly apart, and be made anew.

_End of Part 2_

* * *

><p>There'll be about a week's break before the finale begins. Bear with me please. As usual, all comments are welcome.<em><br>_


	41. Beneath a Rainbow Sky

"So, finally decided to join us down here in the world of the living?" Squall said dryly. "Aren't you going to be late?"

Mira stared at her father bleary-eyed as she came down the stairs, trying to rub some life into her hazel eyes that the shower hadn't managed to wipe away. It was heartbreakingly adorable. "S'no school today." She shouldered the backpack at the bottom of the stairs and almost rushed past her parents before they spoke up.

"You're in a hurry. Up to anything?" Rinoa asked.

"We're meeting up at the Shell and heading out to the city when the ferry gets here." She pecked her father on the cheek and waved to her mother. "We're gonna take another look at the castle later too! Bye!"

Squall watched Mira head out, the door swinging open to let the sunlight in. Through the rectangle he could see the rest of the town, Balamb spread out across the plains in an undulating wave of greenery and houses, not stopping until they hit the surface of the Shell that jutted out of the island's centre like skeletal remains of some giant clam. He could look that street and know the name of every face behind those doors. Delicious scent wafted through the air from a dozen homes, and the flowers were blooming like they were in a hurry. He felt arms enfold him from behind as Rinoa stood above him and leaned down to whisper into his ear.

"Well?" she asked.

He was still looking out at the town as the door swung shut. "It's perfect. It's everything we wanted. Every_one_ we could have wanted."

She stepped around him, grabbing his hand and pulling him up from the table he had been eating breakfast at. He allowed himself to be pulled to the door and outward into the street. Warm air swept across his face from the hot sun, and…

"It isn't real though, is it?" he said, as he stared up into the sky. Even though they were faint he could see the lines and patterns up there. The blue sky and pure-white clouds were a mask, and laying just out of sight behind them were a lattice of rainbow lines and colours. As he watched they twisted and danced in the sky, sending out faint lights down to the ground below. He watched, and where they touched…things happened. His brain couldn't comprehend what his eyes were telling it, only that the world was still changing. It couldn't have been long, could it? He could still remember the winds on Centra as the wave of light had swept over them. Or maybe it had been centuries. No way to tell. "It _isn't_ real," he repeated, and felt a little better.

"Hold onto that thought," Rinoa said as she stood close and held his hand like a guide to a blind man. "While we can look up and see that sky you know this isn't the true world." Even as she said it she looked down the lane that their daughter had vanished down.

Squall looked the same way too, after the young girl that had smiled and kissed him on the cheek. He knew where she was going knew the friends she was going to meet. Had talked with their parents at birthday parties and school meetings and watched the games they had played as little children. Squall looked out now across the rolling plains that made up the city of Balamb and even though a part of him said that _yes, this is real, this is how the world really is, _the greater part of his mind rejected it. The part that had stood before Ultimecia's castle without fear, the part that had travelled space and time before. It wasn't fooled. He didn't know what was past those rolling hills, but he knew it wouldn't be the world he remembered. "None of it?" Squall asked, looking the same way.

"If it's meant to be, it will happen," his wife replied. "Once we're free of here."

"It's a nice thought, isn't it? Assuming there is even a way out."

For a second Squall thought that his wife had spoken. Then he looked at his wife and saw the direction of her gaze, and turned. It was like looking at a darkened mirror. Squall looked at the doppelganger of his wife and for a second was lost for words, before he remembered. She was older, lines around her eyes from age, and there were small streaks of grey in that shock of black hair.

The other Rinoa looked down at herself. "It's strange, having a body again." She stared at her hands. "It's been so long. It feels…different…than being a simple ghost." She looked up at Squall, then quickly away. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. I just wanted to see."

"But why…" Squall started, but the sorceress cut him off.

"This is a perfect world, is it not? Then why shouldn't my own wishes be granted?" She spun, the long black dress she wore whirling around her. "I could get used to this."

Rinoa – the _real_ Rinoa, he couldn't help but think – just smiled as she held her husband's hand. "Congratulations," she said.

The ghost that had clawed its way out from the depths of Sorcery's endless layers smiled at her successor. "Thank you my dear. Even if this is temporary, it's good to taste the air again. And speaking of temporary."

Squall looked back at the town again. He had grew up in the town, played as a child in that massive bone-coral structure the townspeople called the Shell. He'd met his friends there and they'd grown up together, laughed and cried and celebrated together. He'd met Rinoa and fell in love and they had a beautiful girl, and always life had been a perfect one. Squall Leonhart, commander of SeeD, looked at all these memories, and saw them for what they were: False lives that had put themselves in his mind and tried to muscle out the real ones. He hated it.

_Is this how you felt, Quisty?_

He looked at the two sorceresses, the angel and her ghost. "We've got work to do," he said.

"We're not meant to be here," Old Rin said. "_She'll_ have felt that, at least. Even if the two of us-" she gestured at her younger self "-can keep their eyes from finding us, they'll know. This is meant to be _their_ perfect world, not ours. Almas will feel us here like a splinter in the foot."

Squall looked out, away from the city. It only confirmed what he thought. Instead of the path leading down to the docks and the ocean, there was only an infinite plateau of endless green fields. "Everyone's here, somewhere?" he asked, thinking of his friends. His real friends.

"It was the most I could do," Rinoa said. Like a bird wrapping its wings around its chick to protect it from the rainstorm, she'd sought out the souls of her loved ones and kept them safe, even as Almas' sorcery had raged and cried and beat against her wings to destroy them. Rinoa had never met the girl, and wondered what could have happened to make her that way. So sad and angry. "They have their worlds too."

"Will they want to leave?" Old Rin asked sharply. "This world will be everything they wanted, and they do not have _us_ watching over them." She glanced at Squall, who just nodded. "Maybe they'll be content with what they're given."

"They won't be. They'll know, the same as I did," a voice called out.

Squall sighed and wondered how long the man had waited to say that. He spotted the quick and almost-hidden smile from Old Rin and wondered how long she had known, as Seifer strolled up the path towards them. In the long white trenchcoat and boots, and the stress and lines vanished from his face now. He looked like he had when he had been a SeeD. "How long were you waiting for your cue to say that line?" he asked the man.

"Only a few minutes," Seifer replied, picking a fruit from a tree as he passed and tossing it idly into the air. His gunblade swung from his belt as he stopped next to Old Rin. _Oh,_ Squall thought. _Of course._ Seifer's dream was simple: Be a Sorceress' Knight, save the day. His perfect world was unfolding before him. The blonde gunman went on. "I've been 'awake' a few more hours than you, I think. I spent them walking around this place. It's more than a little creepy, especially replacing Garden with that huge thing." He cocked a thumb at the Shell in the distance. "Which of you is it that wants Garden to not exist, anyway?"

_All of us, I think,_ the thought flashed through Squall's mind. More than a few times he'd wished for SeeD to not be necessary, for a normal life. Maybe it was more than just a simple wish, because he had no problems with that particular thought.

"Did you see anything a little more pertinent to a solution?" Old Rin asked sharply.

Seifer shrugged. "It's a big wide world we've found ourselves in. We're all here. Let's get your little Orphanage Gang back together." He turned. "I hope you called this right Rin or this might be our train's final stop."

Squall nodded in agreement. Seifer had made landfall on the shore of Centra and walked across the plains like he had done. When he'd come to the camp and seen the miniature army Rinoa had gathered he had even assumed the same thing Squall had, and wondered when Rinoa was going to lead them back to Timber and tear down Aimsland's machine. When Rinoa had told him she had no intention of doing so, and explained what she had planned, Seifer had run the whole gauntlet from disbelieving, to furious, to finally acceptance. Now here they were together, on the plain of an unreal world. A sorceress, her knight, a ghost of a sorceress, and _her_ knight. For a start, it wasn't half bad, Squall thought.

"Let's get to work."

* * *

><p><em>I feel you out there. Like pins and needles in my head.<em>

_I don't want you here._

_But where are you?_

* * *

><p>It went on and on, getting hazier and hazier in the distance until he couldn't tell whether it was the limits of his vision or whether it was the world itself that was shimmering out there. Even the wind coming out of that undefined land seemed different than the warm smells and breeze that had surrounded them in Balamb Town. There was a metal taste in the air. He wasn't the only one thinking along those lines either.<p>

"Under construction?" Seifer asked.

"This is a world made of dreams," Old Rin replied. "Where there are no people to dream, there's no need for the world to exist." She waved a black-clad hand at the horizon. "People want _their_ world to be perfect. They will want even their land to be the same."

"It'll be the same?" Rinoa asked. They'd been walking for around an hour now, just soaking in the scenery as they came to grips with this new place. They'd reached the sea and it had been sparkling, so clear they could see almost to the bottom, shifting to a brilliant blue the further it went out.

Squall understood more as the old Sorceress talked. The Balamb Town they had left was real because people _wanted_ to live in Balamb. Nations of patriots who truly loved their country, or people who had lived in one place all their life, would hold onto that dream and drag it into being. Out in the oceans it would be much different. Fish and seaweed didn't dream. Out there beyond their sight the seas would be churning masses of nothingness, and deep forests would become pools of Sorcery just waiting for someone to come along and _want_ them to be something. Those areas of the world that people shied away from would be experiencing the full force of Time Compression, with no-one there to give them form.

"All of time and space has been thrown together, all the worlds ever dreamed of by mankind. Sorcery is looking through those parallel times and universes: It finds a person wishing for a carefree life _here,_ a lost loved-one _there_, and then looks through all those worlds for that _one thing_, and snatches it away to here."

"You talk about it like it's a living thing," Squall said. She made him nervous, this woman with his wife's face and body and yet speaking about all these things with such weariness. He had asked her as they set out, whether her own Squall was waiting here for her, and she had simply replied; _my own perfect world no longer exists._

"It's a parasite Squall, concerned with its own survival. We-" she gestured at herself and Rinoa "-are merely temporary hosts. It lets us use its power while it sucks us dry, but that doesn't change the end result. The cycle continues, and one more witch is added to the pyre it leaves behind." Old Rin looked back over Squall's shoulder, and waved at the air. "Look."

Squall turned and looked, and for a moment he was a teenager again, staring upwards past the broken and bloodied corpses of SeeDs at Ultimecia's castle. It was that close. Floating above the town, so high he almost couldn't see it, the Palace of Dollet hovered in the atmosphere, thin wisps of chain draping it and hanging down over the town. The building was wreathed in marble and glass instead of stone, and the chains were translucent crystal instead of cold hard iron, but for all that it sent a stab of fear through his heart at the thought of being back in that labyrinthine building of madness and horror.

"My God," Seifer whispered, and Squall remembered the man had never made it to the previous timeless fort they had visited. "Is that…"

Old Rin nodded. "We've made this world as close to flawless as it could be, with our small minds and insignificant powers. _She_ has no such limits, and every facet of herself is reflected here." She gestured at the floating palace with an open palm. "There it is, what all Sorceresses know in their hearts: They are condemned to live inside a prison of their own power. Ultimecia was the same, as was I. Almas Jordin is no different. Her bars are made of gold, but they are just as hard. As for her friends, I can't speak to their fate."

For a second Squall was tempted to feel pity for the girl that must be up there, before he remembered where they were. What had been done to get them here. _All the dead in Timber, the terror in Dollet and Galbadia. Quisty. The things they did._

Seifer turned his gaze away from the barely-visible castle, looking back down at the beautiful summer's day that surrounded them, and the sound of laughter coming from the town they had just left. He swore. "If this is our perfect world can we maybe wish for a little less distance?" he asked, looking out past the sea. "It's a damn long way to Trabia from Balamb, and you _know_ that's where our cheerful little headmistress ended up. Although Hyne knows why she'd wish to live in that frozen hellhole."

Old Rin smiled. "You forget, Mr Almasy. You travel with angels now, and this world was _made_ by us. If you would, my dear?"

Rinoa smiled, and white light engulfed them, pure wings enfolded them as the two Sorceresses carried themselves away into the air. After a second they were gone, leaving only a collection of sparks and white feathers drifting gently down onto the grass. Nobody back in Balamb noticed their departure.

* * *

><p><em>There! Almost, for a second.<em>

_Get out._

_Get OUT._

* * *

><p>"Well, I guess she isn't entirely crazy, after all," Seifer said.<p>

For a few seconds after their arrival Squall had thought they would freeze to death. The entire world was white, snow still falling gently onto them from the cloudless sky. Then he had realised that far from being cold, the wind blowing through the winter landscape wasn't so different from that blowing through the grassy plains they had just left. He'd expected Selphie to be in Trabia, but this wasn't the kind of Trabia she had talked wistfully about back in the real world. A mix of tall buildings were thrown in haphazardly among small cottages, snow-covered cars driving through streets in the distance, the entire thing lit up in the night that had fallen as they had come closer to the city. That was when Squall realised what he was looking at. _Oh, of course._ Selphie was here, but she wasn't alone. He smiled as two figures walked forward in the snowy air.

"Welcome home," Irvine said with a smile. Free of the biting wind and cold of the real Trabia he was dressed as Squall remembered on their first meeting; long beige duster and that cowboy hat he liked so much. The two men embraced when they met and Irvine stepped back to look at his friend. "Seems like this place is agreeing with you. With all of us really."

Squall blinked as he realised… "Wait, you're…" _Was it only me who was fooled?_

Irvine grimaced. "I was there when it happened, right at the centre Squall," he said. "We had them in our sights and we still couldn't finish the job." He tapped the gun strapped across his back. "That'll be my perfect world, right there."

There was something else in his eyes, something the other man was hiding, but Squall decided not to enquire for now. He turned to Selphie, an arm wrapped around Irvine's. Unlike the man who clearly preferred the familiar, Selphie's outfit was more appropriate to the scenery. She was practically buried in fur. "I just want everything back the way it was," she said. "So we can finish all this mess and go home."

"Have you seen it?" Irvine cocked a thumb over his shoulder at the sky. Even here it was visible, hovering like a ghost in the distance. Squall looked up at the Sorceress Palace and for a second felt a chill when he saw that it was no smaller than it had been at Balamb. For a second he had the crazy thought that it was following them, before Rinoa put a hand on his shoulder, feeling his thoughts.

"It'll be like that wherever we go. All we can do is hope she isn't watching out for us."

"It gives me the creeps," Irvine said, looking up at the rainbow-fractured sky. "This whole place does."

_It's because we don't belong here,_ Squall thought. He looked over his old friend's shoulder at the city they had come from. He wondered what the people inside those buildings were doing, whether they knew that they were living in dream-world or had simply accepted it and were content to live out their lives here. Twice now the SeeDs had found themselves fighting to end Time Compression. The first had left the world empty, with them flying over a planet reduced to themselves and clusters of locked-off cities and towns. That had been Ultimecia's wish; to rule over the world and every soul in it trapped inside her web. But Almas was different. For all the death and horror and manipulation they had used, Morden had wanted a 'perfect' world, and so long as you weren't a target of his fury and anger was willing to let you share in it. Squall felt a sliver of doubt in his head, at the task they were setting out to accomplish.

_Will they thank us, this time?_

He turned and pictured the world in his head. Squall knew his friends inside and out, those closest to him. He knew where they'd be, knew more or less what they wished for and desired. They'd all touch down in those places they wanted and he was sure, was certain that all of them would reject the world that would be presented to them. They were SeeDs, intruders here. Like him and Rinoa and Irvine, they'd see this world for what it was and go hunting for their real family. Off at the horizon of a twisting rainbow sky the chains of that magical fortress snaked down from the heavens and landed off in the distance. He could imagine a figure sat up there, looking out of a window, looking for him. He made a decision, and looked at the others. "How long do you think we have?"

Old Rin shrugged. "That's not a phrase that works here." Clocks only yards apart would count out different time as people wished for sunsets that never ended or cloud-free noons. Instead of a smooth line across the world from night to day, dawn would shift and move crazily to accommodate the inhabitants of the new world. "As much as we need, and no more."

"What are you thinking, Squall?" Selphie asked.

"We'll meet at the gates," he said. "Just like old times."

Seifer grinned. "Just like old times."

Squall looked at his friends. "Everyone, we'll be back." Rinoa gripped his hand and smiled at him. He went on. "Find what you need here, whether there's anything – or any_one_ – that will help us, and bring them to the castle."

"You and Rinoa?"

Squall smiled. "We'll get the gang back together." Even as he finished speaking he world began to fade out as his wife's beautiful white wings materialised and encased them in light and power.

Seifer stared at the single gently-descending feather that marked the departure of the Sorceress and her Knight. "So, where do we start?" he asked.

"This Jordin child is a goddess in this world," Old Rin said. "We will need people capable of standing up to the full power of Sorcery."

Selphie shifted her feet in the snow as she looked past the town. This place was everything she and Irvine had ever dreamed of living in. Trabia – not a military academy now but a real school – lay in the snow gleaming like a jewel set in platinum, and the buildings in the town sat around it like they were hugging it for warmth. When she'd woken up that morning she and Irvine had walked through it laughing and smiling, just basking in it. Even if it hadn't been real they had looked through the buildings and parks and pointed out their favourite parts thinking _this is what we'll make when we get home._ That they would stay here hadn't entered her mind. When Squall and Rinoa and this strange future/past/other Rinoa had arrived they'd simply walked away from the shining town and put it from their mind.

But beyond the last homes, out past the borders, the land took on a harsher light. The cool warmth o the sun deepened into a dark red never seen in any sunset. The land was warmer there, but even though it was so close the snow still coated it. Selphie knew if they went there they'd find an inferno, like just home. _Well, they're people too aren't they? Why shouldn't they get their own little slice of heaven? But why so close to Trabia?_ Fire and ice didn't particularly mix well.

"He always did like you," Irvine teased her. In response she elbowed him in the chest.

"Well, we'll need all the help we can get, won't we?" She grabbed him from the back, pushing him away from the city. She caught up to him and linked arms, and together they walked towards the fire.

SCENE BREAK

"Why? WHY? _Whywhywhywhy-"_

She rained blows against Imalia's chest as she cried. It just wasn't _fair._ She could feel them out there in _her_ world, making a mess, just existing there. She'd failed. She was a failure.

"No, they were just too strong," Imalia replied, pushing Almas back until their eyes could meet. "It's not your fault, it's their's." She frowned, a small nervous tick as though she had suddenly forgotten something she had been about to say. Almas watched her eyes as confusion swept across them. It went away soon enough. Imalia straightened up. "Just...just ignore them. They can't hurt us here."

Almas looked back through the window, the stained glass surrounding it tinting the world. Beneath her she could see the crystal chains that linked their home to the rest of the world beneath. She didn't want them there, hadn't wanted that sickening rainow tint over the sky either. She'd tried to simply wish them away but somehow it hadn't worked. She'd asked Morden why not, wasn't this _her_ world now? But he hadn't known. Neither had any of the new arrivals. She had everything she ever wanted here but somehow smaller details had slipped through and she didn't know why. She felt older and younger at the same time and she didn't know why sometimes she felt like an old woman and sometimes like a childish brat. Those massive chains still tethered their castle to the world below and she didn't know why nothing she did could sever them. Some rooms of the palace she didn't want to enter and she didn't know why she was afraid of them.

Imalia placed a warm hand on her shoulder. "Just leave them be. Either they'll learn to accept this or..." _Or they'll be here soon enough,_ she didn't have to say. She knew what the answer was, and had already searched the castle from top to bottom, taking note. There was no sign of Kettil, and she thought she knew the reason, and wished him luck. The other soldiers still in the castle were ghosts and would do whatever was asked of them. The rest...some people's dreams were just incompatible with other's. There were people in this castle she had no wish to approach. "We'll fix it. I promise." She hugged the small goddess and brushed a small lock of hair from her face. Her hand shook as she did so. She didn't know why. "I promise."

_One way or the other._


	42. Orphans

He couldn't tell what it was, flying or teleportation. Maybe they were standing still and she was making the world rotate under them. He wouldn't have doubted it right now, ever since they had arrived – _materialised? Awoke? – _inside the timeless world he'd been able to feel the power radiating from Rinoa. She seemed to drink in the power from the world around her and be invigorated by it. She glowed.

Squall shielded his eyes from the blaze and felt the wind across his face. The light faded as white wings wrapped around them and vanished, and they were left standing in a golden field, looking out across a land chequered in green and gold. He smiled. "I didn't even need to ask did I?"

Rinoa put a hand over his chest, his heart. "You didn't need to say a single word, I could hear it from here." Even her voice vibrated with something otherworldly. She took a step back from him, her hand lingering on his. "I'll meet you there, at the castle."

"How am I going to know where you are?" Squall asked.

She smiled at him, long raven hair wafting gently in the summer breeze. God, she was beautiful. "I'll make a field of flowers for us."

He watched, from the outside this time, as she left. He had to put up a hand as the light from those wings engulfed her, and in a second she as gone, only a faint rain of white sparks drifting down to the ground and vanishing. Squall looked around at the summer they had landed in, and getting his bearings began to walk. He'd only passed through the place a few times in this life, but Squall knew that no matter where he looked here, very little would be different than it was in the real world. _I suppose it was pretty close to being perfect already._ He'd asked Rinoa to take him to one of their family first, and Squall had known that he would be here when he hadn't arrived with them. For a moment he'd been disappointed, his heart giving a little kick, before he had realised why there hadn't been another presence in the Balamb they had woken up in.

_Ah, of course._

It wasn't there, and that was why. Squall felt the bottom drop out of his stomach and almost stopped walking. He forced himself to go on, walking down the hill that the lone gravestone should have been at. He could think back, what seemed like years ago but had barely been a single one. The question Rinoa had asked him had been pushed away as the mad cult and this whole insane war had arisen from nothing. It had stayed in his heart though, dancing around in there and refusing to be ejected. Then one night in Galbadia they had visited a hospital chasing up a lead on that murder and it had pushed its way to the front again and shouted at him to pay attention. He'd taken one look at that sheet with his past written on, seen that location, and known.

He stopped in front of the building and took a deep breath. Suddenly he felt like a child again, like he had been stripped away of everything between now and his first arrival at the Orphanage, alone and without anyone in the world. It felt like a final meeting somehow. It felt like if he turned around now he would see himself there, the path that he had taken. The boy; scared and alone that had gripped onto his older sister because he was afraid of that emptiness. The brat; pushing away his friends – his family – because he was afraid of being alone again. _I've come a long way. _He pushed the door open and walked in.

The smell inside was heavenly, some mixture of freshly-baked bread and brew. As his eyes adjusted to the relative gloom from the blazing sun outside he caught the figure turning around and towards him. He could hear footsteps coming down from the second floor but he forgot about it as the woman behind the bar looked up and smiled at him. She looked like the picture Laguna had shown him once. He hadn't realised then why he had done it, or why he had seemed so sad when he had. He knew now though. She was a little greyer, a little more weathered maybe, but age seemed to have passed by her with barely a touch. When she spoke, he barely managed a whisper as his reply.

"Hey Squall," Raine said.

"Hey mom."

* * *

><p>Nobody seemed to notice her arrive, so wrapped up in their own little worlds that even the sight of her appearing from thin air, wings blazing away, only caused them to shield her eyes for a second. Back in reality – she couldn't help but think of it that way – even the smallest demonstration of her abilities had caused reactions from fear to prostration. Ever since the end of the Second War and the first Time Compression she'd went through life with the power just sitting inside her like a precious but fragile heirloom, gathering dust and taking it out only for close friends and family. Now here she was, free to use it as she pleased, and nobody cared. Parents walked past her, child blissfully swinging between them, lovers walked with arms wrapped around each other and nobody noticed her.<p>

_I'll go head,_ Old Rin had said, and vanished into her own swell of power. Whether the old sorceress had some people she wanted to meet or simply wanted to give Rinoa time to herself she didn't know, but she was grateful to the older version of herself.

She put a hand on the cool steel railing and looked out at the ocean, the same blue and pure ocean they'd been from Bal- from _this_ Balamb. It seemed like that at least was a dream all mankind shared. She looked left and saw the train tracks leading out of the city, a spider-web of metal and wood that wound out of the stations, merging to a point as they reached the massive bridge she walked across, fading into the distance. Rinoa wondered what she'd find out there if she went, but none of the trains were moving. _Why would they, when everyone has what they want, right here?_ She walked the streets of Fisherman's Horizon, just watching. She knew what Squall had been worried about, had been able to feel it as they travelled; _what if they hate us for bringing the old world back?_ She'd thought about the answer and the more she travelled the more she saw. A man on a park bench holding hands with his wife looked worried, or even haunted. A couple watching a child playing in Trabia/Galbadia's snow both wore puzzled expressions, hands shifting nervously at their sides. Even her and Squall. Back in Balamb Town there was a girl playing in the streets with her friends that called herself Mira Leonhart, and a part of Rinoa's mind was telling her that _yes, this is good, this is right_ even while the rest of her knew that it wasn't. People knew, deep inside themselves, that somehow things weren't right. Inside everyone's soul was a small voice telling them to wake up.

But could they change it back before people began to ignore that voice? She hoped to god they could.

She stopped in front of the house after what seemed like endless steps winding upwards. She hadn't expected it but she'd followed a trail of thoughts and feelings, almost tangible they were so strong. She'd expected something like the MD level back in Garden they had lived, hadn't expected what as almost an eyrie far atop the city. The house itself was right though; something small and compact. The person – or people – living in it didn't need much. She knocked politely, and waited for an answer. Then she waited a little longer. Finally…

"I wondered how long you'd take," Xu said as she opened the door and gestured Rinoa inside. She smiled as she caught Rinoa looking around. "Not what you thought?"

She looked around. She'd never thought of Xu as someone like this. The room glowed, the sunlight flowing into the room from windows scattered around the walls and ceiling. Every surface was taken up with something, bookshelves filled and tables covered with odds and ends gathered from all parts of the world, things Rinoa wouldn't have ever thought had places in Xu's mind. She looked away, a little too aware she was effectively examining the woman's psyche. For all its homely beauty though the sight must have galled Xu as she awoke from the soft oblivion of Time Compression. Waking up alone in a house that shouted out that it was for a couple. She must have been furious.

And she was. "I know who you were expecting. A perfect world, that was what they promised. I guess some of us didn't qualify as much as others. We talked about something like this." Xu gestured around, taking in the light streaming from the windows and doorway. This high up, perched on one of the highest buildings of Fisherman's Horizon, there was nothing to get in its way. "Something with a view, someplace no-one would bother us, somewhere no-one would know us." She laughed humourlessly. "Now here I am and she's not here to share it with me. Vicious bitch up in the sky wouldn't even give me some time-faked copy. She wants her all to herself."

_We're all the same,_ Rinoa thought. In a perfect world they were all miserable together. "You've seen the castle?"

"Little hard to miss," Xu said. She sat on the sofa, almost a match of the one in her Garden's apartment. The table in front was strewn with books. "That's our target. Is this what it was like for you, the first time?" Xu had stayed inside Balamb Garden during the Second War, first Cid's and then Squall's deputy. She'd been on-board the Ragnarok as it sped across the empty world left behind, but hadn't taken that final step into Ultimecia's time-forged realm.

"Almost," Rinoa thought, as a chill went through her. There had been the same feeling, for her. Like being inside someone else's house and expecting them back any minute. Every second she had walked through Ultimecia's castle she'd felt the power of the old witch radiating from the stones themselves. The Sorcery that flowed through her body, blood and mind had kept it out like two north poles repelling each other, and the experience hadn't been pleasant. Almas wasn't nearly so powerful, but the effect was the same. Rinoa wanted to tear it down as soon as possible.

Xu leaned forward as Rinoa sat down on the chair opposite her. She seemed to know there was no hurry. Somehow they'd all meet when they needed to, and not before. "What's it _like?_"

"It's like…a river," Rinoa replied. She felt comfortable here, in a way she'd never been with the other woman before. For years they'd passed each in the hallways and she'd barely spared her a glance, even during the Second Sorceress War she'd been just one more face from Squall's collection of SeeD friends. Afterwards there had been travel, marriage, the mess with Dollet and Galbadia and Rinoa had hardly spared a thought for anyone working back in Garden. Even when she and Quistis had started dating they'd barely met. Finally it had taken a war to bring their circles near enough to meet regularly, and in those months Rinoa had seen that steel mask of detachment and stoicism stripped away by fire and conflict to reveal the real person underneath. A year ago Rinoa would never have even considered a conversation like with this her. "Like there's all this power flowing through me, and if I go in too deep it'll just…sweep me away." She'd seen it; in the other Rinoa, in Ultimecia. The bitterness that lied just below the surface in the former and had raged like a thunderstorm in the latter. "I wonder whether eventually I'll end up like the others. I look at all those books about Esthar and what happened there. What Laguna looks like whenever he mentions Adel…"

"You're nothing like them," Xu said. "Nothing. You have Squall, and the rest of the gang. People who love you who'll make sure that never happens."

Rinoa smiled. "Thank you."

Xu took one final look around the room as they departed, and pushed up her coat as the door swung shut on the house. "What's our next step?" she asked, and smiled at the expression of surprise on Rinoa's face. "This is your specialty Rinoa, not mine."

She closed her eyes and saw. Like a magical echo the world unrolled before her mind, sharp detail as people lived in whatever world they had been granted, fuzzy and indistinct where nobody lived. In some places she saw just wild storms and spikes that she couldn't understand, because the beings that had made those places their homes were nothing her human mind could understand. They had left one behind in Trabia, others dotted the endless plateau that rolled out in her mind. But others would take care of that, she was sure. Her own Sorcery and Quisty's Blue Magic had made GFs strange and uncomfortable in her mind, they had always had to share it with someone else. But one of the Gang was the opposite, had an endlessly curious and expansive mind. Selphie treated GFs like honoured guests, and they'd always responded in kind. She'd make them dance to her tune, out of obligation if nothing else. All except one.

She could feel it out there somehow, to the south. Something twisting the power in the world around itself until it was _cold._ The other GFs made their new homes like themselves, but Shiva's presence stood out like a beacon. Bright points danced around her like fireflies around a burning lamp.

"We're going south," Rinoa said.

On white wings.

* * *

><p>"Here, let me take a look at you." Raine pulled back and held Squall at arm's length. Gently she wiped the tears from his eyes and stared at him with worry in her eyes. "What's wrong Squall? I've not seen you like this in years."<p>

It felt like something was hammering on his heart, holding his lungs in a tight and merciless grip. He couldn't speak a word as she held his hands and looked directly at him. He'd wondered from the day he'd found that piece of paper in Winhill what he would have said and now that by some miracle/curse/nightmare here he was, and he couldn't remember a single word of what he'd thought. he could see a shadow out of the corner of his blurry vision but he ignored it, just for now. For all that Squall was an orphan in some ways he knew his father, while he'd never known his mother. "I'm- I'm fine," he lied.

"You've been gone a while," Raine said. "Sit down, let me get you something. You take yours black right?" She moved away from him and he almost pulled her back as she moved back behind the bar, and vanished into the stacks.

"You alright?" Laguna asked.

"I will be. Where are…"

"Kiros and Ward? Out there somewhere in the grand old countryside, just after the sun came up," he waved a hand at the open door. "Just taking in the sights I guess. Kiros looks like he's ten years younger without having to care about Esthar or politics. Ward still doesn't speak though, even though I'm pretty sure he can, here. I think he knows it won't last."

"Hmmm," Squall said, wondering what to say next, _how_ to say it. Laguna saved him the trouble.

"You know."

Squall laughed, a dry chuckle. Something halfway between humour and sarcasm. "Yes."

Laguna looked haunted. Instead of looking at Squall he was looking in the direction that Raine had left by. He felt a stab of pity. Squall had Rinoa, and couldn't imagine life without her. Laguna had had Raine, and had lost her. Being here must have been tortuous. _Some perfect world. _"Since when?" the man asked, looking every bit his age.

"Since Galbadia. I asked about birth records during a hospital visit there. After a tip from Xu, of all people. I can check dates well enough." Squall slammed his fist on the table in anger he hadn't realised was there until he spoke. "Goddamnit why didn't you just _tell me!"_

"I was afraid," Laguna replied, and he sounded it now. "I didn't know what to do." He spoke in an accelerating torrent, like some dam had burst and he had to get the words out of drown. "At first it didn't seem important with the Second War and Ultimecia. Then that ended and god, I just couldn't figure out what the hell to say. I kept waiting for some right moment to just say "Hey Squall I'm your father-"

"That would have been enough."

"-but nothing ever really came up, at least not until the wedding. I almost did it then but I just couldn't work up the nerve. Then years just…_passed_ and every time I thought about trying all I could think about was what I'd say if you asked why it took so long." He stopped, and shrugged. "I was afraid."

"You never had anything to be afraid of," Squall said quietly. Sitting there in the dimly-lit bar, light from another world streaming into the room and only silence inside it, he didn't know what to do. _I spent my life as an orphan, I don't know how this works._ "Now what?" Maybe if he had been younger it would have been different, but he had no idea. He chuckled to himself.

"What?" Laguna asked.

"I might have to ask Zell for advice."

Before he could stop himself the chuckle turned into a guffaw, and after only a second the two men were both sat there laughing hysterically.

"That's really not fair to the man," Laguna said, wiping the tears from his eyes.

"You two sound like you're having fun," Raine said as they emerged from the backroom, carrying something in bowls that looked hot and delicious.

Laguna stood. "Sorry but we're going to have to skip on that." She looked hurt and he shrugged. "A prior appointment." Raine just nodded once, seeming to understand, and went back behind the bar. Squall caught the wistful look there.

"You sure?" he asked.

"Yeah," Laguna said with a sigh. "Can't dream forever." He paused. "You'd have loved her."

In those words Squall heard every inch of Laguna's lost past. He felt some mixture of regret and acceptance. He wondered what it would be like to just…accept it. Stay with Rinoa and try to make something real out of this perfect existence they had been dropped into. But they'd always know. "Let's go then."

"Goodbye boys," Raine's voice sounded faintly from the doorway as they walked out, but neither looked back. Even here under the blazing summer light they could see it, the faint line and scratches of the rainbow, running across the back of the sky, and behind it the massive crystal chains that led up to the floating castle.

"So how do we get there?" Laguna asked.

Squall shrugged. "We start walking. Hey." He pointed and Laguna followed his finger to the two figures in the distance.

"So are we leaving?" Kiros asked as he approached the pair. "This place gives me the creeps. Like a living painting or something." The black man looked at Squall and then at Laguna, and a small smile crossed his lips as he laughed. "Finally, you dumb old man."

"You knew?" Squall asked in disbelief.

Kiros nodded. "Sorry Squall. But it wasn't my place to say. Not that I didn't try and make him."

"Yeah, yeah. Don't look so smug," Laguna said as he glared daggers at his subordinate. "Let's get outta here." Ward nodded, and Squall had to smile at them. Squall thought he knew why Laguna sounded so envious when he talked about him and the rest of the 'Orphanage Gang', even though all this time he had his own.

"Come on dad," he said. "Let's go home."

* * *

><p>"My god," Xu breathed as they both looked at the city before them. Rinoa had no choice but to agree.<p>

They'd went south from Fisherman's Horizon, following the cold pale beacon of power to its source. She had expected something strange and inhuman, not _this._

The city glowed before them. There was no gradual increase of urbanity, the desert simply gave way to it, as if someone had drawn a line in the sand and said; _here_ is the desert, and _here_ is the city. Walls of sheer ice shot up from the ground and formed into hard-edged and open buildings that went up stories high. From the hill Rinoa and Xu stood on they could see into a twisting mass of crystalline ice that bounced sunlight inside itself like a hall of mirrors, paths curving inwards and meeting at a central point. Something that could have been a blooming rose or a broken eggshell sat at the centre of the icicle city, focussing the light into itself. It was hard to watch.

"Is she in there?" Xu asked.

"Yes."

"Good." She started own the hill into the city, without turning to see if Rinoa was following.

Rinoa paused only for a second before going after the other woman. She was a little nervous, she had to admit to herself. They'd always been…incompatible, even before she had inherited her Sorcery. From the little she had been able to understand of the magical beings feelings, Shiva thought her soft and weak. Rinoa found Shiva cold and uncaring. Shiva of course felt those thoughts, and so on, and so on.

"Look, they're not real."

Rinoa stood next to Xu as they watched the inhabitants of the city go by. From a distance they had looked like anyone else, but now they walked through the city – and here she _could_ feel cold, a cold she hadn't felt even in Trabia – she could see what was wrong. It was faint but it was there. The light fell through them, and if Rinoa looked hard she could see details and other people through the civilians. "Like ghosts." She waved her hand in front of one but the people just walked past her. She and Xu spent a minute trying to get the attention of the people walking by, but not a single one responded.

"Like robots, or zombies," Xu said, and frowned. "They all look the same."

"That doesn't sound right, they…oh." She saw it then, when she looked at their faces. The face or hair or height was different, but one thing they all shared in common _They have the same eyes._ From every face she looked into, blue eyes stared out. _We came south_. "We're in Centra," she breathed.

Xu heard the tone in her voice. "Is that significant?"

Quickly Rinoa remembered that Xu hadn't been in Esthar when Odine had made his discovery. She explained as fast and well as she could. The expression on her companion's face went from puzzlement, to distaste, to disgust. When Rinoa had finished her story, it went back to puzzlement. "Why would Shiva wish for _this_? Surrounded by Blue Mages in the desert?"

"Let's go ask her."

They moved through the city for what seemed like hours. Half a dozen times they would find their way through twisting passages only to find their way blocked by a sheet of solid ice as hard as steel. Rinoa and Xu would find themselves separated by some random trick of the light they cast reflections in the wrong places, and found themselves alone in a city of blue-eyed wraiths. More than once Rinoa had turned around to see only herself staring back, and a flash of blue in her vision. Finally she took one step too wrong.

Xu had been quiet for too long, and when Rinoa turned around there was no one behind her but ghosts dressed in white robes. She tried to push past them, go back to the last time she _thought_ the path had changed, but instead of yielding before her like the others these ones barred her way as if they were anchored to the ground. Still they didn't look at her or speak in any way, and Rinoa felt a twinge of fear as she realised she was trapped there. For a moment she reached inside herself, looked for the Sorcery to make wings again and carry her away, but for some reason she didn't. She suspected it would be a very bad idea.

She thought she could hear laughter in the air. "Xu? _XU!"_

There was no reply.

* * *

><p>"Why are we here?"<p>

He'd been all over the planet – the _real _planet – and this wasn't anywhere Seifer recognised. It was just…a field. Grass lay off in every direction he looked, except one.

"To see a man whose knowledge we need," Sorceress Rinoa said, walking forward.

"What do you, hey…" Seifer's voice trailed off as the house came into view like a sudden mirage in a desert. There was nothing special about it, identical to a thousand houses he'd passed in his life. Anywhere else he wouldn't have given it a second thought, but here it looked almost comical; a one-story flat somehow ripped from its building and deposited into an endless field of waving grass. Behind the house hidden by the walls he could see a few scattered greens growing. "Who lives there?" he asked as he caught up to the older woman. Even as they approached it seemed to waver in and out of view. A hum surrounded the entire place, fields and all. He could feel it in his bones, like some hand was reaching into his body and rattling his skeleton. He knew that feeling, had last felt it when he had been standing near to Adel, all those years ago. He looked across at 'his' Sorceress and saw the look of concentration, faint but there. The house was trying to vanish, he realised, and only she was keeping it visible and approachable.

"Someone…who doesn't wish to be found," she said, as they finally reached the door. Instead of blasting it down with her power, or shouting out, she simply knocked and waited. They didn't have to wait long.

He'd been expecting Xu, or Nida, or any of the other Garden flunkies they might want. The woman in front of him was no-one. She was shorter than both him and Rin, with short cropped hair something between auburn and red. Approaching middle-age with grace, she was cute rather than beautiful. That smile though was something else. "Hello."

Rinoa smiled. "Can we speak with your husband for a moment?"

Without asking who they were or what they were doing here, the woman just nodded as Seifer raised a questioning eyebrow and puzzled expression at his travelling companion. Rin though refused to answer him as the stranger turned back. "Just go on around, he's there."

"What are you planning old woman?" Seifer said as the door closed and they moved around it.

"Subtlety," she replied simply, as the walls of the house ended and the small garden be

"I don't-" Seifer looked around as the other man looked up, and their eyes met. Instinctively his hands went to his gunblade, although he didn't know why. The man in front of them didn't have a weapon in his hands, only a shovel. Even with that though the man still looked dangerous. Seifer could see the scars, even from here. The woman from the doorway stood next to him, her eyes looking at them with just a little nervousness, as her arm rested on the man's shoulder possessively.

Above all else the man looked resigned, rather than angry or scared. "How did you find me?"

Seifer took his hand away from his side as Rinoa perched on a fallen log next to the man. Apart from the planted trees and the hole he was currently digging, there was nothing else in the garden. "You knew we'd come, Kettil."

The man dropped the shovel but didn't move to stand. "Isn't this enough?" One hand went up and rested on top of the woman's. "It's over. We won. Can't you just accept it?"

Instead of answering Rinoa turned to look behind him, at the trees. Against the flat plateau the house lay on they were magnificent, she had to crane her head to see the tops. In the morning air they sparkled. "What are these for?"

Seifer saw the answer before Rinoa did, but he let the man speak. He glared at the old Sorceress as she ran a hand up the side of one. "They're a…tribute," he said.

"They're your guilt," she replied harshly. "You think planting some life will make up for all your death?"

"I _think_ you should leave," the woman said forcefully, glaring at the intruders into her life.

Rinoa turned back to him and her voice dripped scorn. "I have no problems with that. You're no-one to me, Kettil. You can stay here with your fake life and magic…_thing_ until the end of time if you want. Out here I'm sure you can stretch it out as long as you like. But you'll give us what we want before we go."

The mercenary fumed. "I only wanted peace. You have no right-"

"_We have every right!_" Rinoa blasted back at him. She waved a hand at the trees behind her, the bag of seeds that lay on the ground beside the man. "How many trees are going to grow here Kettil? A dozen? A hundred. You think some leafy memorial will absolve you? All those lives say _you owe me._"

Seifer stared in wonder as the woman spoke words like that with Rinoa Heartilly's voice, and wondered what future this sorceress had crawled from, to make her so.

For a moment they looked into each other's eyes, Kettil trying to stare down the furious woman. But he had no chance, and finally he submitted. "Morden."

"Morden," Rinoa echoed in confirmation.

Kettil looked at the woman by his side. "Anna, give us a minute."

The woman – Anna – glared daggers at Rinoa and Seifer, but eventually left. Kettil watched her leave. Finally when they were alone he sat on the fallen tree-stump and began to speak.

"I met Morden sometime before the Second Sorceress War started. After the first one ended most of the army got cut away, including me. Galbadia loved its army, not so much when that army was at home doing very little. They discharged whoever they could and told us to get on with our lives. Even the…more well-trained…units." He flexed a hand and Seifer could see the scars and calluses running down it. "Caraway and the others made noises about giving us our due but you know how that shit works. We made what lives we could."

"Caraway was in charge that far back?" Seifer asked.

Kettil nodded. "He was on the way up, anyone could see. He wasn't _the_ top yet, that was the other generals, under the president. They were the ones I guess, responsible for this whole mess. We heard rumours, experiments that-"

"Artificial magic-users," Seifer said, and waved away Rinoa's questioning glance. He turned back to Kettil. "We found some labs where they made them. Nasty."

Ketill nodded. "They were obsessed, after the war. Esthar were scary – still are – and they were already thinking towards the next war. They were soldiers, they couldn't imagine Esthar _not_ retaliating. After the Wall came down we had no idea what was happening."

"Revolution," Seifer interjected. "Galbadia had nothing to worry about."

Kettil shrugged. Here outside in the sun he seemed almost…normal. Shorn of the knives and black clothes he wore back in the old world he looked like just one more old soldier. "They wanted Sorcery of course. After they saw what Adel could do it was like some kind of mania with the brass. They were desperate for _anything_ like that, and that's where our boy comes in."

Kettil painted the picture and Seifer saw it in his mind. There was something about him, this young boy with the blue eyes and dirty-blonde hair, and enough hate in his heart to power a city. They'd met somehow – even Kettil himself wasn't sure how – and just…drifted together. Neither had anywhere else to go. They'd done some work together, just wandering mercenaries. Kettil didn't elaborate but he could hear in the other man's voice that it was no kind of mercenary work SeeD would ever have touched.

"Anna. She…she died, in the first war," Kettil said, looking back towards the house that stood alone in the fields. "I put flowers on the grave every year, and that last year when I went back to the car he just said he could make it right, and he needed my help. That he finally trusted me enough. As a friend."

"You fool," Rin interjected.

Kettil nodded, not disagreeing. "I had skills he needed, and I _believed_ him. God I don't know why, back then we were just two nobodies out of thousands. But I believed him. He had a little of his family's power, even if most went to the sister. A small shard, but it was enough to make people follow him."

_That shard of Blue Magic served the asshole well, _Seifer thought. "What does he want?"

Kettil laughed and waved a hand as if to encompass the world underneath the rainbow-patterned sky. "This. A perfect world."

"But what does he _want_?" Rinoa said, almost dangerously quiet.

Kettil sat there for a second, just thinking. The silence stretched out for a minute and Seifer was almost about to tell him to get on with it when he finally responded: "He wants power. He wants to be able to look out of his window and have everything he sees be under his command. He wants to be the inheritor of the power Imalia-"

"Go carefully."

"-That Ms Trepe received at birth instead of him. And he wants his family back. He wants his sister and he wants his parents to tell him what a good job he's done. He wants his Archangel to raise him up. He wants to be loved by his underlings and feared by everyone else." Kettil waved a hand at the, the castle that seemed eternally just on the horizon. "That's what you'll find up there. Is that enough?"

Rinoa thought for a second and then nodded. "It's enough."

"Then leave me be."

Seifer only looked back once as they left the house, towards the castle in the distance. Kettil watched them leave, his wife with a hand on his shoulder. He tried to search for some kind of hatred or scorn inside himself for the hired killer, but couldn't. He'd done far worse, and for less reason. If there was a peace to be found inside his hollow world, he hoped the man could find it.

* * *

><p>The break in the massive ice wall stood before her like a cracked eggshell, shards and icicles hanging from the surface like sharp teeth, and Xu shivered. Even as she wanted to turn back and find Rinoa she knew that somehow she never would. She knew enough about GFs to know that a message was being sent. Scratches on her arms from where she had forced herself through narrow breaks in the ice-buildings deeper and deeper into the heart of the city attested to it. As did Rinoa somehow becoming lost without Xu realising it for a long time.<p>

She was welcome here. The Sorceress was not.

"What are you telling me?" Xu whispered as she took one step after another inside the massive structure. The walls inside glowed with a deep azure blue, and the cold radiated from them in waves so much so that she didn't dare stop moving or the shivering would take hold and she wouldn't be able to start again.

_I wanted a perch I could see the world from and be alone with my love. Is this the inside of _your_ head, Shiva?_

The light before her was so bright it was almost a physical force, and when Xu pushed through the final walls of ice into the centre of the massive crystalline structure, she had her answer.

There at the centre of the throne-room – and there was nothing else this place could be – was the essence of Shiva. Not the blue-tinted human woman that they called up to fight for them, but the true form of a GF. Power arced and crackled around a shape that twisted and formed and re-formed as Xu watched, so bright that it hurt to directly look at. Like a New Year's bauble smashed onto the floor and splintering into a million pieces, reflecting light from a thousand facets. She stood a dozen metres from it and still the cold ran through her clothes and skin deep into her bones. Not just some ice goddess but the _idea_ of winter itself. Shiva had no eyes, or even a recognisable face, but Xu could feel her attention like a gale against her. The Guardian _Force_ stayed her down. With no weak or unimaginative mind to limit her, every facet of that unknowable being radiated power. Xu stood there, ice already forming against her clothes, desperately trying to hold herself from shaking and wondering whether she should be bowing or simply prostrating herself. In reality they were bound by laws but inside Time Compression, a world created and powered by magic, GFs were gods.

_I have been used._

The voice arrived in her head and seemed to bounce inside the room. It made her head ring, like the words had been placed directly into could see the words in her mind, and the anger that wrapped itself around them. _Forced to survive I have taken more than I was owed,_ they said, and as Xu heard/thought/remembered them being said the walls of the massive chamber lit up, and she watched as memories unfolded on them like a movie projected onto a screen. Xu stood at the centre of the massive cathedral-space as lives played themselves out on the walls. She saw a stone building, small shapes – children – running through it and laughing. Looking up at Balamb garden surrounded by the grass and clouds. Xu saw Squall and Irvine and all the others in fragments that came and went, and finally herself. Xu and Shiva watched as Xu's image smiled out of the walls at them.

_Desired, dreamed of, wanted, but not like this,_ the thought came from the goddess. _A debt is here I would see repaid._

Finally she realised what Shiva meant as the thoughts arrived in her skull. _It's a trade._ GFs couldn't live in the world, experience life. They had no physical existence, their entire being was a roiling magical cauldron. So instead they traded their power for the memories of those who junctioned them, and lived through _those. _That was why they made their nests where the human mind storied memories. That was why Shiva had wished for this city around herself and filled it with ghosts, sent out her power like a beacon to attract others. Xu turned away from the walls that played out Quistis' memories and looked towards Shiva's core, a headache already forming as she tried to stare into that maelstrom of energy. "You're offering me Quistis' memories. What do you want in exchange?" she asked.

_Leonhart showed me his courage, Heartilly innocence. Tilmitt's confidence and Irvine's determination. Dincht's joy and Almasy's pride. What will I add to my life from your own? What will you show me, little hunting bird?_

Xu already knew what her answer would be and she knew what Shiva wanted. If this was her price so be it. Xu had been lucky to have it at all, but love was something that a goddess would never find. For all the power and majesty of the ice-queen, Xu pitied the GF. She stepped forward into the living ice-storm and felt it wrap around her, draw her closer to the centre of the room. There was something there, at the centre of it all, but her eyes couldn't make it out against the whirling white winds.

_Show me your love,_ Shiva repeated, and this time Xu heard the almost-longing in that imperious voice. She would never repeat what happened next to anyone, not for as long as she lived. What she felt and experienced as she tried to give the GF what it/she had asked for would be her secret forever. All that went through her mind as she felt Shiva's essence flow around and through her was that she desperately wanted what it had, and if she had to give herself up to get it back she would. That was what drove her on, for what felt like an eternity.

Finally it ended. The storm around her fell away to nothing and Xu lay on the throne-room floor, the cloud of wind and ice called Shiva hovering above her. She turned over on her back to stare upward at the kaleidoscope and saw something new in there. A blue spark. Shiva's voice arrived in her head.

_Her new life is a shell, memories and soul of another man twisted and warped. Her old life lies here_. _Take her life._

Xu cried out and tried to shield her eyes from sudden glare as the blue mote descended on her from above, blazing with azure light. The last look she had of Shiva was somehow a pair of blue eyes, suspended against a white nothing, and then she squeezed her eyes shut as hard as she could against the glare. When the light faded and she risked opening them again it was to find herself in an empty room, sprawled across the floor like a discarded doll. For a moment she felt gathering anger at Shiva's deception, until she realised what had happened. She could feel a new presence inside her mind, a wrapped-up soul given to her by the magical goddess. Waiting to be delivered to its owner.

Xu threw back her head and laughed.

* * *

><p>It was like a scene from a dream, with a nightmare lurking behind it in the mists. The flowers went for as far as he could see, in every direction he looked. Even the road he had travelled was gone now, replaced by the endless field. Squall felt darkness descend on him as a pair of hands covered his eyes.<p>

"Hey," Rinoa said happily as he spun around and scooped her up. For a moment neither of them talked as they shared a deep kiss. "What do you think," she whispered as their lips parted.

Squall looked around the opulent fields. They looked like the ones he remembered from the old Orphanage, the ones from before Ultimecia's castle that had been stained with SeeD blood. In this version of Time Compression the sky was a clear blue instead of a pained dark grey, and the field extended farther than he could see. "It's alright, I guess," he teased.

"You louse. I went to this effort and that's all you have to say." Rinoa closed her eyes and flung an arm out, and flowers bloomed underneath her. She laughed, and for a moment Squall forgot why they were there. "You're late though. Look."

Squall did, and saw the man leaning against the lone stone wall. Zell waved a hand, and he waved back with a slight smile.

"Beat you by a good few hours, slowpoke," Rinoa teased. "He got to watch me do this too. What?" she asked as she saw his smile.

Squall shook his head, thinking of himself and Laguna laughing back in Winhill's bar. "Nothing, just a funny little thing." There were other shapes in the distance, and he smiled and called their names out as they approached.

"Watch the flowers you dummy," Selphie chastised her fiancé.

"Sorry, sorry," Irvine said as he tramped through the field, still dressed in his dusty old coat. He looked up, at the giant chains. "God, talk about déjà vu."

Squall followed his gaze. The mists far up in the air covered it, but for all that it was still a sight he recognised. A golden palace that had been perched on a seaside mountain now floated in the distance, the massive crystal chains clinking and shifting in the soft breeze as they went from the edges of the fields to the rocks above. He could barely make out the front gates and from the ground they stood on it looked like miles.

"God that's intimidating. Is this what it was like for you before?" Laguna asked, staring up at the castle.

Ultimecia's world had been a twisting black nightmare compared to this, but Squall was painfully aware of leadership being pressed onto him again. He'd dodged around it as long as he could, shoving off responsibility onto Xu and Quistis, and then running off to Centra and leaving Fujin and Raijin to pick up the pieces in Galbadia. Now everyone was together again and eventually they'd look to him, for reasons he still didn't completely understand. Cid and Quistis could talk about leadership qualities all they wanted but he still didn't see whatever they did. Maybe if he did it would stop working. He looked around to see Seifer, Xu and Rinoa's older self standing near the edge of the field a distance away from the others Xu and the aging Sorceress were deep in some discussion he couldn't hear.

"So now what, boss?" Zell asked.

Squall sighed. He knew he should have some rousing inspirational speech, but somehow he didn't even have the words. The hate he'd felt for Ultimecia wasn't there when he looked for it. He could picture the ones sitting inside that castle, the ones who had caused all this, but somehow couldn't make the feelings stick, not after what he'd seen through Rinoa's eyes as they had sat hand-in-hand on Centra's shores and she had laid it all out before him like a map. If he had any emotion it was against Sorcery itself, the insane power that seemed to bend and warp people around itself, controlling them via greed or fear or envy or love. Every time they came up against it they ran into nothing but misery. A boy lost in an unfamiliar country, taken by people who were scared of power and wanted their own, turned into a man forced his twisted version of paradise on the world. A girl built to be a vessel for that power, manipulated and coerced into making that paradise real. Just two more orphans lost and looking for answers, finding the wrong ones and Sorcery there to promise _everything can be made right, if only you do this. If only._

Staring up at that castle Squall thought back to his darkest moment, the memory coming up from the depths of his mind. The dark and cold of cold vacuum, stuck in an ill-fitting and oppressive space-suit. He'd caught Rinoa and they'd made their way home together, but for one millisecond he'd felt her glove almost – almost – slip through his, and in that one moment he'd felt real terror. He wondered; if it had been offered to him, maybe he'd have grabbed for that power just as desperately as Aimsland his comrades had.

"No, you're nothing like them," Rinoa said with a smile, and Squall didn't know whether it was the bond between them as Sorceress and Knight, just one more strange aspect of this crushed-together world, or plain intuition that let her read his mind.

"Let's just end this."


	43. Angels

It was beautiful and disgusting, all at once.

Squall looked up at the walls of the palace, out of breath and panting. The climb had taken hours and it had been unlike anything he'd ever seen. Sometimes he'd looked down through the translucent crystal chains and seen clouds below him, other times there'd been ground inches away. Once he'd seen flat ground and for a second he'd been tempted to make the short hop from the massive floating links to the island, before common sense had stopped him. The island had fallen away into chunks instantly, things peering out from inside the pieces with red eyes and sharp talons. The sky had fractured around them and spat shards of what could have been rainbow glass onto them, and the chains had went between as wide s a highway to barely a finger's-breadth. _They won't break, they can't,_ Old Rinoa had said confidently and had stepped forward onto it. Squall had held his breath waiting for the thin length to snap, but the old Sorceress had just smiled and walked on.

_She wants to be free of the world, wants to fly high above it where it can't touch her. But a part of her wants to be back down there and won't let go. That is what this chain is,_ the old woman explained, looking at them all. _You all awoke in what you wanted the world to be. But she is a Sorceress and the world _is_ her, every facet of her mind. Every strength and weakness._

Squall thought this was precious little weakness but he'd kept his mouth shut as they climbed. Finally the chain had started to bank up and the going had gotten even harder, if never quite impossible. Finally they had been climbing almost vertically, and when he'd raised a hand and his palm slapped against a horizontal surface he'd have breathed a sigh of relief if he'd had the energy. He'd simply clambered up onto the grass, and waited there panting as everyone else hauled their way up and onto the grounds of the palace. And what a palace.

He didn't need anyone to tell him what he was seeing. The Dollet palace had been beautiful in reality, and still was now. But every surface shouted _keep out_. The wrought-iron fences were covered in sharp barbs and almost seemed to twisted as he watched. The corners of everything were just a little sharper than they should have been. He put up a hand against the massive golden door as lightly as he could and felt tingling as the metal shifted under his hand and brought out barbs. He looked up and it towered over them. Almas' fortress pretended to be a fairy-tale castle but was every bit as hostile as Ultimecia's castle had ever been. _No, Ultimecia's castle was more honest about its evil._

"Now what, commander?" Xu asked, and Squall could hear the impatience there. She'd been one of the last to arrive and her eyes had been shining, a look in them that Squall hadn't seen since before the war. He'd had to think hard to remember when last Xu had seemed this…cheerful.

"We-" He didn't have a chance. The air itself seemed to vibrate as the doors slowly opened, making an unpleasant sucking sound as they slid across the grass that made Squall's skin crawl. The day was bright and the sun blazed as hard as ever, but somehow no light crossed that threshold.

_Are we being invited?_

_By who?_

"It's a trick," Zell said.

"Not if we know it is," Seifer said, tapping the point of his gunblade against the ground. He looked into the castle with impatience. Squall wondered if he'd be the same if he'd been with them last time. He was about to reply when he heard the noise. A tapping that wasn't coming from the reckless swordsman. He turned, realising how close he was to that darkness as someone came out of it.

The man…the boy really…couldn't have been older than twenty, but the expression on his face spoke of someone who had seen too much for his youth to handle. Squall met the eyes of the man and was struck by the thought _I know you_, but it was Xu that spoke first.

"Alec?" she said in disbelief.

The boy just nodded, glancing back into the depths of the palace before stepping out into the light. Even free of the shadows he looked haunted. "I knew you'd come."

"Why are_ you_ here?" Rinoa asked, her voice even more gentle than usual.

Even free of the shadows cast inside the massive building Alec Nuo looked like he was teetering on the edge of collapse. Even so he reached out a hand and Squall shook it. The gesture seemed too mundane for their surroundings. "It's my home. Even here." He laughed grimly. "I guess it is to her as well because I woke up and she was still in it." He looked up at Squall. "I knew you'd come for her though. Thank god."

"What's happening in there kid?" Irvine asked.

The question seemed to jolt Alec out of his half-reverie and he looked across at them all. "It's madness, I can't make sense of it." He shook his head. "I can't explain it. She doesn't know what she wants and it all keeps changing." He spoke on and painted a picture of the interior of the illusionary world inside the palace walls. Entire wings of the castle destroyed or re-built, rooms, doors, windows shifting around and the half-ghosts that populated the palace transforming from one thing to another as the Sorceress' mood shifted. Even the inner circle, the cultists that had come through and were permitted to dwell inside, weren't immune if they stepped into the wrong place at the wrong time. They had areas of the palace that belonged to them that stayed more-or-less the same, and they stuck to them.

"We're here to end it," Squall said. "Where are they?"

Alec pointed upward and to a man they followed his finger. As it went up the palace lost the old flat form it had had when it was built on Dollet's mountainside. Spires emerged out of the stone and twisted around each other, and in the centre something that could have been a giant egg or a twisted mass of thorns, covered in stained glass. "She's there, at the centre of it all."

"Where's Quistis?" Xu asked, quickly.

"The outskirts, I think," Alec answered, glancing back inside again. "It's like a storm, I don't dare get too close to the inner chambers. She's the only one who can go near her, I don't think even Morden dares."

"She's dangerously unstable. To be expected I suppose," Old Rin said thoughtfully, staring up at the edifice before them. "We were old women when we came into our worlds, and we knew what we wanted. This one is a child and she came by her power violently, without training, guidance, practise. No wonder her world is such chaos." The detachment annoyed Squall, just a little bit.

Rinoa – _their_ Rinoa – must have thought the same way. "Is there anything we can do?"

"This."

Squall didn't have time to react, as Old Rinoa grabbed her younger self and without a thought pushed past Alec, over the boundary of the doors and into the castle. The effect was immediately. He felt like a bomb had gone off inside his head, someone screaming into his ear from a centimetre away. He fell to his knees and felt…_something_…fly over his head and out into the air around them. It was like a weight had been placed onto his back and he knew if he turned onto his back he'd see furious eyes staring down at him from the sky. Instead he just sat there on the ground as the chaos rolled around them. Rinoa had been right. This was nothing like Ultimecia. For all her insanity the witch had _known_ what she wanted, and her castle while madness had been a structured madness. This was the opposite.

"Holy shit," Seifer breathed as he picked himself up.

"We have to go into that," Selphie said in awe, not really a question. Turning and walking away was something that just didn't enter their minds.

Squall looked at the two Rinoa's on the other side of the door. The older looked out with a questioning glance, asking _well, when are you going to join us?_ His wife looked no less determined. He saw a hand reaching down to him and was hauled to his feet by Laguna.

"You ready?" his father asked.

_Ready as we'll ever be,_ Squall thought as he stood a step away from the entrance. The darkness was all he could see, and the twin sparks that were Rinoa and her older version standing inside waiting for them. In that uncertain darkness they glowed.

He looked at his friends as they stood one step behind him, waiting on his cue. He was about to open his mouth to speak, to ask if they were sure, but Zell beat him to it.

"Right behind you."

He shrugged, and stepped forward, and it all went to hell.

* * *

><p><em>Help<em>

_It's dark._

_It's dark and I can't find my way out._

* * *

><p>He felt like if he opened his mouth he'd cough up blood, like if he so much as breathed wrong his body would fall apart. A second ago he had been placing one foot in front of the other, following Rinoa and Squall as together they stepped across the threshold of this crazy goddamn place. Now he didn't know where he was. His eyes were telling him he was somewhere else while the rest of his body fought to catch up. His eyes adjusted to the gloom slowly, and Irvine found himself in a maze, facing down a long black hallway towards nothing, towering blocks of something going off to either side. It looked like a familiar sight but he couldn't think where from. As he adjusted further to the gloom he saw a figure in the distance, a figure that sent chills down his body.<p>

_No, it couldn't be. Impossible._

He tried to move sideways out of view and was rewarded by his still-not-in-sync legs by a wild lurch behind one of the towering walls, which rained down sharp objects onto his head. He heard the dry rustle of paper and realised he was surrounded by toppled books from the library shelves around him. He heard a sharp _clang_ as his rifle hit the ground and winced at the noise.

"Hello? Was that one of you guys?"

_Hyne if you're up there thank you. _Selphie's voice rang out like a clear bell in the darkness, it bounced from the walls and bookshelves and he had no idea where it was coming from. For a moment he felt a gust of relief that it had been her he'd seen down that long dark space, but it vanished when he realised it couldn't have been, not with that silhouette. He wanted to jump out from his dark little corner find her and pull her to the ground. What little light in the massive library – he had no idea what was causing it – was scattered and random, throwing up pools of light in the room and falling away to almost total darkness. The next voice to speak in that dark place wasn't Selphie's.

"I know you are there."

Wherever Selphie was in the room she must have heard it to because the faint footsteps faded the instant that commanding voice spoke up. Whatever night-vision Selphie had developed in Trabia's long dark night it was certainly better than his, because it was her who found him. Irvine felt her fingers against his back, not reassuring, but a message tapped out. One of Garden's codes, one he hadn't used in so long he had to think hard to decipher it. When he did so it was direct and mirrored his own thoughts.

_Run?_

Irvine laid a hand on Selphie's forearm and the two held a silent conversation as sharp _tack_ noises sounded up and down the corridor, as the third occupant of the room paced it. She was looking for them.

_No map_, he responded back. He had no idea where he was. The shadows in the room made his eyes water. He had to concentrate hard but he could see them shifting. Wherever he and Selphie had been taken it must have been near the storm Rinoa had talked about. He remembered the Dollet library being between the inner and outer wings. If they were this close to the centre he had no idea what to expect.

_Fight?_

_No,_ he tapped back instantly.

"More phantoms to haunt me?"

The shadow moved around the corner and he saw them searching as his breath froze in his throat. Two shining blue jewels in the dark. For a second he thought _Quisty_ but the shape was all wrong. A little taller, a little thinner. He suppressed a gasp as Selphie tapped out on his arm hard enough to sting-

_mothers_

-and then before he could stop her she had stepped out into the empty space between the bookshelves. Irvine felt a pull of warm air around himself and didn't have time to shout a warning, as red and orange covered Selphie like a flowing blanket, and suddenly the room lit up as fire surrounded the SeeD. When he took his hands away from his eyes he finally got a good look at the library.

He'd been right about the shadows. The walls twisted gently as he watched like a sheet billowing in the breeze. New bookshelves sprung into existence from nothing, meeting up and forming into a maze. He could glimpse titles in half a dozen languages and make sense of none of them. Books surrounded him where he had knocked into the shelf and the words on their open pages slid around his vision as he tried to look at them. The air was hazy with incense and his eyes watered as he looked up into a space bigger than Garden's quad. The ceiling just seemed to go up and up without end, the room larger than any cathedral he'd ever been in. They were close to one end, and Irvine could look past Selphie and the woman she faced and could see nothing of the other but a writhing mass of colour and angles.

Not that he had time to look for long, as Selphie faced down the woman and Irvine found himself just watching the conversation. He didn't know whether she was exerting some kind of unreal pressure on him or whether he was just frozen. He hoped it was the former.

"Mrs Aimsland?" Selphie asked hesitantly.

"Ah, not a ghost then," the woman replied, and for Irvine it clicked. The same hair, the same eyes, even something of the same stance there, as if Quistis had been just a softer, gentler echo of this person. Irvine had even seen her before, a picture in Esthar's history books of a woman used and then discarded. Imalia Aimsland the senior. She stared Selphie down and everything about her was hard and sharp, even the voice. "You do not belong here then. Maybe we can assist each other."

"How?" Selphie asked.

A hand swept to encompass the entire room, books and lights and shifting walls and all. "This strange palace, I don't know how I got here, or how to leave. People come and go but they're not real and won't answer my questions. I ask my family but they refuse to give me a straight answer." Those cold eyes stared down at Selphie. "What has happened?"

_You're a ghost too. You were executed by a madwoman before any of us were born and now your little family's brought you back to soothe his own ego. You've been created out of time and you don't even know it._ He felt sorry for her, this shade of an older life. There was no way she could know she wasn't real.

Selphie was more diplomatic. "Your family, a man called Morden-" She coughed. The stare must have getting to her as well. Irvine could feel daggers pricking at his mind, trying to get in. Quistis used her Blue magic like a sledgehammer. The mother wielded it like a surgeon's knife. Selphie started again. "Morden is your grandson, he-"

A look of surprise replaced the regal detachment at the words. "A grandchild? I don't remember… you mean my son escaped Esthar?"

Irvine knew Selphie wouldn't have the heart to tell this ghost that her family hadn't escaped permanently, had found their end underground at the hands of a desperate group of greedy generals. "Yes, his name is Morden. He found a Sorceress, and-" Selphie found herself cut off again.

The woman slapped her forehead and hissed, like something that should have been obvious finally occurring to her. "Oh, of course. Time Compression." She sighed in annoyance. "That old dream." Her eyes slid sideways as Irvine finally stepped from behind the shelves. Not as if he could have taken her by surprise. "Your husband joins us."

Selphie blushed. "He's not my-"

"Maybe not now, but soon," the woman teased. "I can see it." The grandchild had inherited that smile as well. "What do you intend to do with this little mess? Clean it up I assume?" She turned and walked back to where Irvine had first seen those eyes, which in the light of the Selphie's blaze turned out to be a leather chair surrounded by a pile of books.

"Yes," Selphie answered. Ifrit's light still glowed around her. She looked like a fiery little angel. "We have friends to need to rescue."

"Good luck to you."

Irvine though was surprised and showed it. "You don't want to keep things like this? I thought you…err…I thought Blue Mages served Sorceresses?"

"I have no wish to live a lie," the real Imalia Aimsland replied forcefully. "If my family hasn't learned from their mistakes I see someone will have to teach them." She picked up a book from the pile. She looked over at Irvine and Selphie again. "They are my family and I will not fight them, but nor will I stand in your way. Who _are_ you, if I may ask? It takes great fortitude to remain yourselves in a world of dreams."

_She's like us_, he thought. "We're SeeDs," Irvine answered. "We're a group who stop things like this from happening. Supposed to, anyway."

Imalia smiled. "A noble goal. Our masters are never quite wise with their power, it takes people like us to keep them in check." She hesitated for a second, and then… "How are my children? Are they…"

Irvine thought before he spoke. "You have a granddaughter, a SeeD like us. She has your power and she's amazing. We haven't met anyone else in here."

"What's her name?"

"Quistis," Selphie said, without missing a beat.

"Quistis," Imalia repeated wistfully. "I like it." A hand went up to point deeper into the library. The space along its path seemed to harden and solidify, and where a moment before the area between them and the inner walls had been a twisting chaos, under that line Irvine saw form emerge and turn into a path, and a door. "There. Now leave me be. I promise you I'll have words with my grandson when this is over."

_No you won't. _"Thank you." He grabbed Selphie's hand before and before she could complain the two of them were walking away from the lone woman in the chair, and towards the inner doors. Irvine shuddered as the grabbed the handle

_NO NO NO _

_NO FURTHER _

_GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT_

and twisted it, the metal squirming like worms under his hand, and he and Selphie were through only half a second before they slammed shut behind them. He felt his coattails tear like a razor had caught them, and they were in the dark again, a strong wind buffeting them from nowhere and only Selphie's light to illuminate in the darkness.

"What was that about?" she asked quietly as they stood there, not taking any step forward. "Why the quick exit?"

"The books she was reading, one of them was a history one."

"I don't…oh." Selphie sighed. "That poor woman."

"Forget _her_, poor _us_," Irvine muttered, staring into the darkness. He could make out faint shapes down there, moving silently just beyond the edge of Selphie's flames. He shuddered as something that could have been a head or an arm turned and something that could have been eyes stared at him, and that wind howled above them breathing down his neck. "Selphie, what she said back there…"

"About?" she replied.

"About us. When we get out of here…" He reached for her hand. Found it and gripped it. "Let's make her right."

She smiled up at him and didn't miss a beat. But then, she never had. One of the reasons he loved her. "Sure."

_God I just hope I haven't left it too late_, the gunman thought, as they walked into the darkness together. He could feel her in there somewhere. At the centre of that storm was a girl not much younger than him, and he could feel the anger and fear radiating around him. They were closer now.

* * *

><p>"Well that was intense," Zell said, kicking a rose petal from under his feet.<p>

Xu felt a sudden irritation at the man and wanted to tell him to stop, but she realised he was just feeling nervous. She knew Zell well enough to know he got loud when he got nervous.

"Sorry," he said, looking around the place they had found themselves in. "But where are we?"

They were in the rose garden. Or rather they were in whatever the old palace's rose garden had been. Now it wasn't so much a garden as a meadow. The field of roses went as far as they could see, like Rinoa's flower-field but nowhere near as benign. Thorns grabbed at her heels wherever they stepped and she could feel a dozen scratches every time she put her foot down. The sky was that same rainbow chaos, but somehow dead and grey like a giant cataract covered the air above them. She didn't care though, because she was looking farther ahead than Zell and had already seen the tower. taller than anything she'd ever seen and covered in spikes and thorns and half a dozen things she couldn't even identify but knew to touch would maim and kill. She had eyes only for that tower, and the sound of spray she heard from behind it. She could feel a pull inside her and somehow she knew Quistis was up in that thing, could feel it in her bones and mind as the memories given to her by Shiva reached out towards their home. She could hear a dull roar as behind the towering stone edifice the sea surged up what had to be a cliff and sent huge waves crashing against it. How there could be a huge field of roses and an ocean halfway up a palace, half a mile above the ground if it was a meter, wasn't a question she even bothered to think of. Only the tower held her interest. _I have to be there._

"Xu?"

She knocked his hand away irritably as she stared up and tried to figure out a way to climb the monster. "Not now Zell, we-"

"No _really_ Xu."

_Intruders._

_Away._

She turned at the command in Zell's voice and saw it. She felt like laughing as the shadows rose up from the thorns, teeth bared and blades raised, sightless eyes staring out of black faces. _Is this supposed to scare me, little girl?_ She and Zell stood close together, the martial artist's fists raised as the copies of Leonard Nerva inched forward. There had to be a dozen, two dozen, and even as she watched more oozed up from between the thorns of the rose-bushes, forming into the mocking and grinning man she remembered. "Zell, do you trust me?" she whispered.

Zell didn't take his eyes away from the others. "Of course."

_No entry._

_Retreat._

"I need to be in that tower," she said.

Zell grinned, turning back around to face the horde of clones and going down into a fighting stance. For a second all of the wear and tiredness and years fell away, and he was a teenager again out on his first SeeD mission. "I can arrange that." He cocked a thumb back at her. "I'll hold the fort out here, go for it."

_Die._

_Die._

Xu spun and ran, as fast as she could. She heard the _clank_ of metal meeting metal as the first clone jumped forward, meeting Zell's armoured fists. There was a whoop of joy from Zell as more rushed forward, and Xu was already halfway across the field, spilling flowers in her wake. Her hands grasped the iron handles of the door and she hissed as heat ran through her palms. She heard footsteps from behind her and looked around fast enough to see a shadow rearing up, cold dead eyes and a grim smile across its blank face. She kicked out using the door for leverage and was rewarded as her steel-capped boot went through the thing's face like she was kicking through pottery. The thing clawed at its face as it fell back and Xu was wrenching the door open with all the strength she had, Zell still fighting what could have metres or miles away, the air seeming to distort the distance between them. With one thought for the man – _win, Dincht - _ she pulled as hard as she could, and the last thing she saw of the outside was a thin line of rainbow light, and the rose petals sweeping around the man. Then the doors swung shut, and the only light in the tower's interior came from above, along with the sound of surf.

She climbed.

* * *

><p>"Was it everything you thought it would be?" Morden asked.<p>

Seifer stared at the man down the barrel of his gunblade, aching to pull the trigger. But he could feel Old Rin holding him back somehow. Those faint blue eyes stared at him with scorn and he wanted to wipe the smirk from the man's face. It was the smirk of a man who knew he'd won, the gaze of a man who thought you were just one more amusement. Harmless. He'd seen that stare before and he hated it, he fucking hated it.

He'd expected to be surrounded by luxury and debauchery, gold and tacky furnishings everywhere. Instead the castle he found himself in reminded him of the old orphanage, dressed stone and walls covered with tapestries and curtains, wrought-iron chandeliers above casting down flickering candlelight onto the floors. The entire thing was like a child's image of what a castle should look like. "I liked the old place the way it was," Seifer said.

Morden shook his head. He was wearing a simple white cloth suit and there were no weapons in his hands but somehow Seifer didn't trust that faint azure gaze. "I had some hopes for you Almasy, before Loire got his claws into you. You fought for us once, with Adel against SeeD. You could have been a hero instead of a lackey."

"No, I'd have just been a different lackey," Seifer said. His eyes were watering, he could feel something digging at his brain as Morden stared him down. He felt a hand on his shoulder and instantly he felt better as the older Sorceress beside him stepped forward.

"Your dream will be over soon," Old Rin said. "Surrender now and this need not be painful."

Seifer watched as the smug satisfaction on Morden's face faded away, replaced by anger. "You think you can stop us? You can't stop us. We _won,_ false angel."

"The only false angel in this cursed place is your own, Aimsland," Rin said. Wings unfolded behind her, her power draping the room. They looked like Rinoa's, a pure white, but smaller and more intense. As if their wildness had been tamed long ago, the extraneous and useless parts stripped away until only the perfect core remained. A true master of Sorcery. "Look around, the storm around this place." They had heard it when they had crossed over the threshold, searching through the castle for a way into the centre of that power. Eventually Rinoa had just forced her way through, throwing surprise away as they blasted their way through magical defences towards the centre of the palace and the goddess there. They knew they had been noticed because the last door they had entered had been into this ballroom, with the man himself waiting for them. "It will crumble soon enough. She can't control it. Better to end it now and face justice than die when it falls."

The anger turned to fury, and the power Aimsland had always wanted and now had bubbled up into those eyes that shined with an inhuman blue light. _"NEVER!"_

The anger made him sloppy, or rushed, because Seifer saw the blow coming before he was even halfway across the room. Blue lances swept up and down where he had been standing, scorching deep grooves into the stone floor. Ribbons of white met it and Seifer had to look away as Rin and Morden's power collided with a scream of twisting space and rock. He caught a glance of a glance and moved again as Blue magic passed by hot enough to burn even without touching. Instead of fear or caution though Seifer exulted. _Finally, a real fight._ He felt like laughing. He'd faced Blue magic across the battlefield before. Quistis had a lifetime of patience and experience with her power, had studied it and shaped it into a hundred different forms. Morden was throwing it out without thinking, raw energy with all the simplicity of a bullet or blade. Seifer could handle that. Readying his gunblade, he aimed for the centre of that sapphire-white storm and struck.

* * *

><p>She hadn't changed, not from the last time Xu had seen her. But the eyes were different here. Last time she had been pushed away and the look in Quistis' eyes had been resignation, acceptance. Now there was confusion and discord and she felt her spirits lift just a little bit, as outside the waves from the imaginary ocean crashed up and left water running down the windows. Zell had to be fighting in a storm out there.<p>

"You again?" Imalia said, and the voice was tired. "Why do you keep coming? What do you want from me?" She sat cross-legged in the centre of the room, surrounded by books that had been tossed there from empty shelves that lined the room. Some had pages that fluttered in the breeze, others were empty leather covers with only scraps where the contents had been torn out. White paper drifted gently across the room and Xu picked one out of the air. Ragged scribbles covered the page, dense-packed and so close as to be an unreadable mess.

-_-_

She let go and it fluttered away into the air, joining a host of others as they circled the blonde woman. Quistis/Imalia sat at the centre of a storm of words. Memories.

"I'm here for you," Xu said quietly. "Always for you."

"I don't know what was in these books. Back out there it was all so simple, but now…" Imalia/Quistis shook her head and the pain on her face was obvious. "I had dreams, I think. My brother said he'd make them all come true but I don't remember dreaming like this." She frowned. "My brother? I don't have a…" she held her head in her hands. "I can't think. Can't think."

Xu stepped forward, a hand outstretched. If she could just touch. "Just let me help you," she begged. "I can-" She stopped as the blade whipped up almost faster than her eyes could see. The same chaos that twisted the fairy-tale roses and tower into this dark place was in the sword too. Xu looked down its length, saw the whorls and golden links of the Save the Queen twisted around the blade, followed the steel until she was looking into her eyes.

"Don't, just don't. I…" she stopped.

"Quistis-"

"My name is _Imalia! IMALIA!"_

She stepped forward, ignored the pain of the whip's barbs as they tore at her clothes and skin, stepping past it until she was almost close enough to touch the other woman. She felt cold steel encircle her and ignored the pain as she tried to look past the angry thing in front of her and talk at the person inside. "There was someone called Imalia Aimsland but not the one that Morden wanted," Xu said quietly. "She grew up into an amazing woman, with hopes and dreams, people she trusted and a family of her own. Your brother didn't want that person, he wanted a copy of himself, someone as bitter and twisted as he was. So he tried to kill her and make that person with what was left and his own memories."

"If I don't have those I have nothing," Imalia said, her voice like sandpaper as she held onto the sword that wrapped around Xu like barbed wire. The books still whirled around as the storm tried to break through into the tower, paper flying around like daggers.

Xu felt a cut across her cheek and went on, the angry rustling of pages all around them nearly drowning out her voice. "You know this is what Morden wanted. Is it what _you_ wanted? Quistis wanted a world where justice ruled, where people didn't have to be afraid of things like this. She wanted peace. _Is this what you wanted?_"

"I don't know what I want." Imalia whispered, and Xu heard the despair there. "Why are you here? Why can't you just leave me alone?"

"Because we made a promise."

"What?_ WHAT?"_

_If I was lost, would you come and find me?_

_I'd bring you back from the end of the world, however far you went._

_I promise._

The wind roared around them, a gale of screams and water as the ocean crashed in through the cracked tower walls, the light of the fire throwing up strange twisted shadows. Xu saw grey wings splashed against the wall and the pages weaving and forming, glimpses of crazed eyes through the gaps in the maelstrom. She felt something cold and clawed grasp her around the neck and try to wrench her backwards. _Please god just give me a little more time._ "I'm here now," she said. "Please."

Blue eyes looked into Xu's own and the raven-haired SeeD commander saw something inside them chip and break, some barrier come down or vanish. The woman in front of her spoke. Not the cold and hard voice Xu had heard across the television screen in front of a burning timber, something older she had heard a thousand times. "Help me," Quistis whispered.

She stepped forward through the storm of wind and paper, saw the words crawl across the torn pages like a row of ants (_)_, felt the barbs of the whip fall away as Quistis dropped her arms away and Xu embraced her lover for the first time in months, the first time since back in Garden all those months ago. She whispered quietly

_I love you_

and felt it like a fire burning through her mind, felt the memories and thoughts and soul that Shiva had kept safe flow out of her like a torrent, through her hands. She was looking into Quistis' eyes as they widened and _something_ happened there, because suddenly the other woman was limp in her arms and Xu had to move in close before she could fall, all the time surrounded by the storm of black words and dancing shadows, a wind that screamed at her like a banshee. Something was crawling there, red and white shadows crawling around under her skin like worms. She felt something run over her hands and for a second was frozen in fear as she thought she felt blood. But then she saw it, and almost retched as something viscous and black fell away onto the floor, dissipating and vanishing even as she watched. She thought she saw things in those pools of liquid before they vanished, images and faces, and Xu realised they were memories, fakes forced out as the proper ones took their place again. _Thank you, Shiva._ She felt a burning down her hand, angry pinpricks where it touched and ran over her skin on the way to the ground and nonexistence. Morden's memories vanishing into smoke. She ignored it, didn't let her mind register it as Quistis' eyes opened, and there it was. Xu felt like laughing, felt like standing up inside that whirling hurricane and laughing into the rafters. Instead she brushed an idle hair out of her love's face.

"Xu?" The voice was weak but it was hers, all hers.

"I'm here, I'm here. I'm not going away."

She looked around. "We're inside the tower? I can remember…roses. God it's all so confused."

"A nightmare," Xu whispered, and meant it. "It was just a nightmare."

She sat up, sloughing off the paper that had surrounded them as they lay there. The storm around them held its breath, the waves outside miles away as Quistis blinked her blue eyes clear and looked up at Xu. "He was so…angry. At everything." She looked haunted. Like she wanted to be sick or furious or sad, at herself or Morden. "My god, I did all those things..." She put a hand to her mouth, looked ill.

"No, not now," Xu said forcefully. She wanted to sit there forever, just kneel on the ground with Quistis rested on her lap, but she knew they couldn't. _Zell._ "We have to leave. They're waiting for us." _They might be looking for us, even now,_ she didn't say. She didn't know how the connection between a Sorceress and her Knight worked, but she could feel it in her bones: Almas knew, and she would be here soon enough, dragging her endless chaos with her. "We have to go _now."_

They stood cautiously, testing the waters as the storm finally died down. Xu caught a lonely page wafting down from the rafters of the stone tower and saw the word sprinted on it in a scrawled child's hand; _NO._ She ignored it as they went down the winding stairs, Quistis seeming to gain strength with every step she took away from that closed room. Finally the huge black doors hung before them, twisted and broken, some swaying dangerously from its hinge. Xu shook her head in amusement as she saw Zell splayed out across it, resting like some conquering hero. Of the hordes of black swordsmen that had converged on them as she had run there was no sign, only pools of black oil dotting the outside like water after the rain. "Dincht?"

Zell just smiled. "Told you I could…" His face went from a grin to surprise and all the way to horror before Xu realied how stupid she'd been and what Zell was seeing.

She waved her arms at him to ward him off. "No, No! Zell, you don't have to-"

But Zell was already coming out of his fighting stance as Quistis just waved a hand and smiled at him. "Hello Zell." She looked around the endless field of roses, brown and curled up and dying. "You've been busy."

His mouth dropped open and before Xu could stop him he'd rushed past her, picking up Quistis in a bear hug and spinning around. "_Quisty!_"

Quistis laughed as he put her down and she got her bearings on the ground, pulling the black jacket over her in the cold. She frowned as she saw what she was wearing. "It's good to see you too. Everyone's here?"

Zell nodded. "And then some. Hyne, god, it's good to see you again." He looked at Xu and his face said it all. _I owe you, forever._ Xu had her lover back, Zell had his older sister. "Now what?"

_Now we go, far away from here, as fast as we can._ But she pushed that thought out of her head. "We find the others. We go further in." She looked around the field, once filled with red blooms and now just blackened stems and thorns. "Somehow. Quistis?"

"I can take us in," Quistis said, looking out over the field as if seeing it for the first time. "I didn't forget anything that…anything that I did. Morden's life is gone but everything that I did after he turned me into Imalia is still a part of me."

"You didn't-" Xu started to protest, but Quistis overruled her.

"No, I did. Some version of me, and those are my memories." She pointed into the distance, into what to Xu was more blank air. "This way, there'll be a doorway, or at least something like that. I used it when I got…when it got bad. When she needed comfort." She shuddered, and Xu wondered what form that comfort had taken.

_She's just a little girl, really._

"Well, let's get moving," Zell said with a grin, all the uncertainty of the last weeks seeming to have washed off him now that he had his family back. "We don't want to be last to the finale."

She grasped Quistis hand. It felt warm. Felt right. "Let's put an end to this." There would be time afterwards, time when they could just look into each other's eyes and talk. For now though they were SeeD, and they had a mission.

They walked on.

* * *

_One there was a little egg. It hatched and a monster came out and ate the world._

_A place for everything and everything in its place._

_The end._

His footsteps echoed on nothing and he had to try hard not to look down. There was nothing under his feet, nothing anywhere. Just darkness as far as his eyes could see. All he could feel was Rinoa's hand in his own, a soft white light enveloping from both as his skin crawled like ants were marching across it.

They were nowhere. Just an endless black expanse and Squall felt afraid. He'd been here before, lost in nothing. Darkness all around and nothing in the world except a dull grey point ahead of them, faint and ethereal but there none the less. Squall looked up and his eyes played tricks on him as at the same time he saw nothing but darkness, but something inside that nothing. Like a wind that was invisible but still tugged at him, sucking him inward. He shivered.

"You're not alone," Rinoa whispered, and he could feel the warmth of her breath in his ear. It gave him strength. His drew his gun-blade in his free hand, but felt Rinoa tugging him back as he stepped towards that grey shape ahead. "No."

"Rin."

"Let me," his wife, his Sorceress said, and he heard the _please_ without it being said. He nodded, and Rinoa stepped forward, away from him. That light still surrounded him though.

"Almas?"

_Go away._ the voice arrived in his memory without travelling anywhere else. He knew he'd heard the words spoken sometime in the past, and was just recalling them now. It repelled him.

"It's time to go home, Almas," Rinoa said softly.

_This is my home, _Squall remembered being said.

"You know that isn't true, not really." Rinoa stepped closer and the shape could be made out now. A small girl, barely older than five. The wings sprouting from her back were hardly larger than Squall's handprints. Rinoa knelt by the spectre. "What do you want Almas?"

_I want to live. I want a life._ Tiny hands reached out to Rinoa, palms up as if to say; look at me. _I saw them in your heads all your heads where was my childhood my orphanage my family my friends._

Childhood kept in a lab like a specimen, turned into a vessel for the power of a God. Adolescence spent becoming a trained killer by a man with no morals or humanity in him. A short time as the symbol of rebirth for a crazed and bitter man, and finally this. Squall stepped forward and knelt down as the Almas/Sorceress/thing looked up at him, grey eyes in a featureless face. "I can't change the past Almas. But this isn't any better." He gestured around at emptiness, his words echoing in the endless space. From outside the room had been a sphere, with a stained-glass door twice as high as himself. From inside it looked endless. "Are you happy here, Almas?"

_I was loved. Morden Kettil Imalia my mother my f-_ The voice stopped in his mind unfinished.

"They're not real, you know that. Just like we did," Rinoa said. "Morden wanted you to bring _his_ family back, not to give you one of your own. Kettil was…he was just a man tied to Morden's dream. Quis- Imalia might have loved you for who you were, but not this." She reached down gently and placed a hand under the godchild's chin, bringing it up until they were eye to eye. Squall could see the vibrations run through Rinoa's body, almost feel the needles pricking at his skin even though he wasn't touching either of them. _She's so strong,_ he thought, of both of them.

_What do I want I don't know I want a family I want a real family I want to be loved I I I_

"Then end this," Rinoa said. "You'll never find a real family in this place. You put it up, tear it back down before it's too late." A second Aftermath, worse the longer Time Compression went on. Squall couldn't imagine how bad it would get. "Please."

_I I I no I can't Imalia where are you I need you I_ The child's head whipped around and Rinoa's gaze followed it, as a beam of fading light split about the darkness. She felt a burst of joy run through her body as a blonde-haired figure walked into the room, the light sealing itself back again and the endless darkness taking hold once more. Her breath caught in her throat as the other man walked up to Almas and knelt down.

"Hey," Imalia Aimsland said gently. But there was something there, something else there, and Rinoa couldn't…

_Imalia Imalia help help me I need you I don't know where to go it's dark and I don't know the way out I don't know who to listen to._

"She's right," Imalia said gently, brushing a stray lock of hair from the face of the tiny child. "We've been lied to, all of us," she went on. "There's nothing in here for us, Almas."

_Oh my Hyne no how can it- Can it be?_ Rinoa's heart stopped as she thought it through, and Almas came to the same conclusion almost as fast.

_You're not Imalia._

"No, I'm not," Quistis said. "She was never real, Almas. Just one more lie. I- _AH!"_ Quistis snapped her hand away as bright red bloomed across it like she had been scored by a knife.

_No no no nothing here nothing here now where are you Morden where I'll tear it down. No family here or there or anywhere. I'll tear it down._

_On top of us all._

* * *

He was flagging. Low on energy, low on hate, low on whatever power he'd leeched from Trepe or been given by his sorceress in a bottle. Seifer had fought a hundred duels in his lifetime, in battles worse than this and he could read Morden like a book. _Just fall down you bastard, just one opening is all I'll need._

The room around them screamed like it was alive. Tendrils of energy blue and white lashed through it scoring into the walls and floors where Sorcery met Blue magic and they tried to devour each other. Seifer's coat smoked from a dozen or more holes where droplets of nothing had sprayed onto him and a cut down his side that burned like fire where he had been a little too reckless. He threw his caution to the wind long ago when the fight turned from a controlled dance of magic and blades into something wilder as Morden became angrier and angrier and Old Rin began to throw more and more of herself at him. The light flashed through the room with every impact and Seifer's limbs worked on automatic, parrying and deflecting what he could and dodging the rest.

"_DIE ALREADY!"_

Morden brought his hands above him and screaming light poured from them, slamming it down where Seifer had been milliseconds ago, the floor rending apart, masonry and blood (_blood?)_ flying everywhere, the castle seeming to moan in pain as Morden Aimsland lost control. He was barely visible, a pale figure wrapped inside a shield of faded blue light that flickered and broke and re-formed with every strike Old Rin made.

"_I WON'T GO BACK! I WON'T!"_ Whether he was screaming it or crying it Seifer didn't know and didn't give a shit, as a chunk of stone flew out of the debris field the room had turned into and scored a bloody path across his chest. _Goddamnit you crazy old man._

Old Rin's voice carried through the chaos like the voice of God himself. "It is over."

"_NO!"_ Morden's gaze shifted as something moved out of the shadows to his side, and for a second the tiredness in his face was replaced by rage as Laguna and Irvine stepped from the room's last shadows, rifles ready and aimed.

Seifer could feel another presence behind him and knew who it was. "Took your…goddamn…time."

"We were busy," Kiros replied curtly. Ward just nodded.

"Heya Sefy," Selphie said cheerfully. He wanted to tell her to shut up but one look at that tired-but-still-cheerful face and he just didn't have it in him.

It was a rout. Against Seifer and Old Rin he had held his ground, but seven against one, even seven against a magically-powered dynamo was no real fight. Eventually Seifer and Laguna stood side-by-side as Morden snarled at them from the back of the room, clothes torn and bleeding from half a dozen wounds from rifle, Sorcery and blade.

"_Goddamnit! I'd won! I'D WON!"_ Morden paused and sucked air down in ragged breaths, the blue light pulsing with every gasp. But it dimmed, slowly and steadily. It had been a raging azure fire when they had begun. Now it was a mist. Whatever power source he was using was running dry.

"She has nothing left to give you. Look." Rin gestured up into the catacombs, and Seifer could see from the corner of his eye as the colour slowly drained from the room, running away like water downhill. It flowed out of the room towards the core of the palace, leaving behind nothing but gray stone and wood that crumbled like ash as they watched.

Morden's eyes widened as he saw and Seifer could see the despair in them. He kept his distance though, that light still pulsing around the crazed cultist leader. "…Why?"

"She has her own problems." Rin said, almost gently. Some sympathy for a fellow Sorceress maybe? Certainly not for the man in front of her. "Resign yourself."

Morden spat blood onto the ground as the Blue light sputtered and died like a light-bulb finally giving out, leaving behind nothing but a broken and half-beaten man with a broken blade in his hands. He looked up as the castle seemed to shift under them, a tearing sound like ripping paper in their ears as a massive crack ran through the centre of the banquet hall.

"You're done," Seifer said with relish, pointing his gunblade at the man's throat.

Morden didn't cry or scream or fall to his knees. Instead he laughed, and in spite of the man's half dead appearance something in that laugh made Seifer step back. "Maybe…" he chuckled. "But if she needs me, I'm here." He looked up and that blue light was still there. But even as Seifer watched, it was fading away, leaving behind nothing but grey irises. "Blue mages have _always_ answered their family's call."

Seifer frowned. "The hell are you…" he stopped as Laguna gasped like ice water had just been poured over him. "What? _WHAT?"_

"We have to go," the old soldier said. Seifer knew that tone of voice. He'd heard it from his commanders often enough, from Trepe and the other instructors. A voice that knew it would be obeyed.

"After we just…the _hell _Loire-"

"He's right," Old Rin said, staring past them all, at something only she could see. Her eyes weren't Rinoa's deep brown, but something else entirely that shifted between all the colours of the rainbow.

"What about Leon- what about Rinoa?" Seifer asked, eyes still on the man knelt in front of them. But even as he watched something…ethereal in Morden left. The man fell to the ground, strings cut, a beatific smile on his face that reminded Seifer of a shark. "What about _this_ asshole!" He had to shout to be heard over the rumblings coming from the castle's core, spreading out like shockwaves.

"No need to worry about that," Old Rin said. "They have their own shadow to face."

It stunk. He didn't like it, not a single goddamn it. He grit his teeth and spat. "_FINE!"_ He spun away from the unconscious Morden, that grin still on his face, and together they ran, as fast as they could, as far from the encroaching grey ash as they could.

* * *

Squall saw it even as Quistis tried desperately to talk sense into the small ghost. Something in the air, almost impossible to see in the darkness, but he saw it. An outline of a person in fainted blue wreathes, coalescing out of nothing almost on top of Almas. A ghostly hand reached out to touch her shoulder, and the thought ran through Squall's mind-

_Morden_

-as Almas' eyes lit up, the hand-sized wings on her back suddenly pulsing with energy as the light was sucked down into the girl's body.

_Tear it all down._

"Almas _please!_ It doesn't have to be this way!" Quistis begged, but her words didn't seem to reach her.

_No place for me, no place for any of us._

"Almas we can help, that's what we do. That's what SeeDs do," Rinoa said calmly as around them the darkness moaned like wooden beams on the edge of breaking apart. "It doesn't have to end here, let us help you." She grabbed the little girl and shook her, her white wings almost vibrating. "You're like me _you're not alone LET ME HELP YOU!"_ she shouted.

_Like me?_

Rinoa smiled. "Yes."

_Only one Sorceress. Only one at a time ever. The youngest child knows this._

"Oh God I taught her that," Quistis said in horror.

_And _there_ will be only one again, _the little grey girl said/thought/recorded.

"_NO!"_ Rinoa screamed in despair over the roar of entropy.

"We have to go," Squall said, and wondered even as he said it if they could. Whether they'd be trapped in here. The darkness bulged and dripped around them like melting tar or plastic and he could taste static as he breathed, Sorcery coating the air itself. The beam of light that could be the exit or could be a door to nowhere wavered and twisted ahead of him, and without another thought he met Quistis' (_is it true can it be true please Hyne let it be true)_ gaze, and together they picked Rinoa up and dragged her away from the small girl. A word screamed through Squall's head so loud he thought it might burst

_MOTHER_

and then they were away, running for the light and bursting through it back into a castle turned grey and empty. He spun around. _"Quisty?"_

"Not now Squall," Quistis replied, and that tone of voice made him smile in spite of the screaming collapsing palace around him. He could see Xu coming towards them, and the relief on her face must have matched the shock on his own because she smiled at him and just nodded. _It's real._

"It's just…it's good to have you back," he said weakly. He'd speak more, if they got out. Already the ground underneath them was bubbling, their shoes sinking into what should have been concrete.

"Not like this," Rinoa whispered feebly, and before Squall could react turned back and reached for the door handle leading back into that nothing. They didn't budge an inch.

"What's happening?" Squall asked as he lifted a hand up, ash drifting down onto his palm.

"It's coming apart, all of it. She doesn't want it anymore," Rinoa said, still staring at those doors as they buckled and warped under some unimaginable strain.

Squall grabbed his wife's hand, Quistis' in the other. They had done this once before, too. He remembered the long dark, wandering in a cracked empty plain with no end, pictures of his world shoved into his eyeballs, nightmarish scenes of his life gone wrong. If he had to go through it again this time he wouldn't have to do it alone, at least.

"I could have done it," Rinoa said with regret. "She's just a kid."

"I know you could have Rin," Quistis said. "But she didn't want to go."

Squall shook his as around them the walls twisted and collapsed and expanded all at once.

"I just-"


	44. Decompression

_Rin? Are you there? I can't_ -

-air split and thunder ran through the air where they connected. Magical fire versus a cold nothing tinted with blue, and where the two powers met the air twisted and buckled as Ifrit's flames fought to gain purchase on the nothingness and burn it, even as the Blue energy lanced around and through the red-and-gold sea searching for a place to cut. Neither side could find a way to kill the other and Imalia cursed as she danced backward as a stray gout flew over and above her and lanced down to where she was standing. The cobblestone smoked and melted where it touched and she caught a vague glimpse of something red and furred behind the flames, before something at the edge of her vision made her turn, and she barely got her glass windows onto the city below, the people walking the seaside streets and going on with their lives as sorceress cultists walked among them and their leader stewed in her own hate. With the exception of those who guarded her, the servants and soldiers refused to talk to her or even acknowledge her presence. They looked away or stood at a statue-like attention as she spoke at them and eventually she had simply stopped trying, contenting herself with her own company

_I can't think, it's all so confused._

rather than try to squeeze blood from a stone. Her name and captive status went before her like a repelling shield she couldn't escape, and she travelled the halls of the massive building like a ghost, her feet beating a path between her room, the interior gardens and the dining hall. Days turned into weeks and before she realised it her walk back towards her sanctuary as the rest of her was drowned. Sometimes there was another force, a gray shape from the air that took even more from her, and she dreaded it even more then she dreaded the cold sea. Now she sat inside the sole room that remained, a white nothingness that extended both to infinity and barely to the tips of her fingers. She could hear the pounding of the waves against those imaginary walls. Once she had known the sea, given it a name. She even thought she might have known why it was doing it, trying

_It's fine Squall._

single day before moving on. Zone and Watts had offered gratefully when he had come into the city and he had been too tired to argue the point. He'd barely recognised the two men. The old pair of teenage revolutionaries had been sanded down and smoothed over as they had found themselves roped into real governance after the Second War had ended and suddenly Timber had found itself free from the iron fist of Galbadia. Instead of floundered like so many old soldiers Squall could have named they had survived well, and when he had arrived

_I'm here. Just follow my voice. I won't let go. I promise._

led and under them a disappointment and longing over something she couldn't quite describe. As if in the midst of all that chaos she had been able to glimpse the perfect world that her brother described, a smiling figure staring at her with love. But even as she tried to focus on it, grab it and hold it tight, it slipped away and she was left back in the world. The angel who had tried to make paradise real retched and moaned sometimes she would be listening as the woman spoke and suddenly she's freeze up, panicking at the sound of her own voice, speaking words she wasn't thinking and sounding like _that._ So much older, the weight of years and sadness on it. "I know." She glanced back at the wall of water, the images conjured up on it. When you got right down to it, Sorcery was about moving energy from one place to the other. With enough finesse or power you could what you wanted. She had plenty of power, and the other was teaching her finesse. She'd watched it all, as Timber had fallen and burned to the invasion. Had seen Quisty as she tore through

_I can't think, there's too much. Where are you?_

like. Boxes and containers and glass cabinets each with their own memories that she could take out and look at whenever she wanted. But now someone had walked in and strewn the boxes around, tipping their contents onto the floor and smashing the glass and sweeping the shards around until she couldn't think straight. Worse still she dared not clean out of their ornate holding places and examining them from every angle. Nothing new is created here and so I must look deeper and deeper into events that have already happened, to wrench out greater use of them. A conversation with a man long dead develops a thousand layers as I examine every move each of make, every word said and not said, every twitch of every muscle held up to the microscope to stare down and uncover some new meaning. Sometimes the memory is simple and cannot hold my attention. Other memories, my most precious, I can spend years watching, disassembling, teasing out new meaning from old memories. Sometimes with a single discovery, a twitch of a smile or a nervous gesture unnoticed at the time I can see a whole new

_Everything's going back Squall. The way it should be._

matter how much shit was thrown at him. He hated the envious looks he got from women in the street as they passed. He hated the easy confidence that he seemed to throw off and only he could see through. He hated the admiration and adoration he received whenever he walked down the corridors of the palace. He hated the trust others showed in him even as he himself

_Are we all here? I saw Quistis saw Xu saw Zell but-_

Seifer snorted in amusement, but Squall couldn't see how it was funny. He could see the sideways glances and knew that sooner or later they would look to him for leadership. Even if he hadn't had the title they would have done it anyway, he knew. For some reason even during the Second War he'd found himself surrounded by people more skilful, smarter or stronger than he was, and they had all looked to him for orders. At first he had been cruel and dismissive. Then after the War he had been deathly afraid that he would let them down. Now somehow he had become that man for real, rather than only in people's minds. It no longer terrified him. He pushed off from the table he had been leaning against and addressed the room. Even Seifer was listening

_Everyone but…I didn't see myself. I can't feel her in my head Squall, I don't think she came back with us._

really. He kept to himself and we didn't, ah-ha, exactly mind. We're more of the _hard_ sciences in this department and unfortunately Sorcery isn't really compatible with anything _hard._" The way his eyes flicked across to Rinoa, however, told her he'd very much like to make it so. She'd seen it in the years after the Second War. She was a curiosity to be studied, categorised, written about, awards won for the study thereof. The fact that she was a living breathing person was aside the point. "I believe he was studying the effects of Time Compression. The _release_ of all points back to their respective origin points, rather than the Compression itself. He thought that the poor victims of the event must have somehow had their minds taken _away_ when it ended, to some other point of history." The man laughed, an unpleasant braying. He wondered whether

_It's all colours. My God that's me back in Galbadia. I remember that office. I can-_

continued to pummel down onto the streets below, reducing the once-pristine white snow to a sloppy grey mush that made travel treacherous and made obscene slurping sounds at the feet of those who walked in it. The end of the year approached and the dry winter weather was beginning to sense the approach of a wet spring. Even though they should have been months away the cloudbanks of the western continent had come home, and were making their presence felt with a downpour that had started and seemed endless. Xu looked out and saw people rushing back and forth, trying to find a balance between going as fast as they could to get out of the rain and slow enough to avoid tripping in the slippery mire. A delicate act and even

_Just think of Garden. Think of me. Think of everyone waiting for us there. Don't let lost._

Squall had sighed when he had read Zell's half-embarrassed half-professional summary of his and Nida's little escapade and his reply had been short and to the point. The four of them were the sole sources of information they had from the coastal city and he didn't want them risking themselves. They had two missions and two missions only, and neither involved combat of any sort. Squall had written _that_ order himself and made damn sure it was underlined twice. He knew he should have worried about it more. Knew he should be keeping a closer eye on the city, but Rinoa's absence left a hole that seemed to have erased them. He'd woken up from his half-sleep half-coma she had put him in and seen Seifer's eyes and knew without being told

_I'd never leave you. What good's a Sorceress without her Knight?_

darkness they looked like geometrically-arranged fireflies, caught in some bizarre cubist spider-web. Here and there he could see patches of the web where no light shined, or where the hot orange glow gave way to cool blue and white lines as Esthar's technology gave light to the areas of the city that Dollet's guns had rained destruction on. Even from this distance and at this time of night he could see and hear the headlights of Galbadian APCs as they patrolled the perimeters of the city to proclaim that Galbadian soldiers still defended Galbadian territory

_We're going home Squall._

take Squall aside and shout _when were you going to let me know._ It was only later he realised that they didn't know. He could have stood there with them and said _don't you remember?_ but he knew they would simply have wondered what was wrong with him. One more nonsense action from the gunman who had failed the one job he'd had. They'd pieced it all together later, in that snow-covered basketball court in Selphie's ruined could see the rest of the town, Balamb spread out across the plains in an undulating wave of greenery and houses, not stopping until they hit the surface of the Shell that jutted out of the island's centre like skeletal remains of some giant clam. He could look that street and know the name of every face behind those doors. Delicious scent wafted through the air metal made the connection jumpy as hell but the last lines had come through loud and clear. Xu Tyynes prayed for many things, varying them on what aspect of the world was troubling her that day, and today she prayed Odine would stop fiddling around with whatever project had diverted his time and turn the clunky wardrobe-sized communicator into a real working technology. Her one tour of the Esthar facilities after the Second War had told her that for all Esthar's technological sophistication, far too much f it balanced inside the mind of that tiny unhinged man. And now this. "Do we know where he-" she stopped herself. "I'm sorry

_We're all going home._

turned away. Fujin had seen blood and death, up close and personal and at a distance. She had watched as G- and B-Gardens had clashed and seen from a distance the flashes of red-on-blue that blood made against the SeeD uniform. She had dragged the body of a comrade out of a filthy sewer as he bled out over her clothes. She had felt her own eye as it had been ruined by a child's thoughtless cruelty, and the retribution he had received for it. But now she couldn't watch as one more wailing cry came out and for one half-second turned into a cough

_Why didn't she come with us?_

left Almas at the wreckage of the Ragnarok to find just this person, to find some kind of closure of what lone book of her old self, hoping to tear it out of her once and for all. Instead she'd arrived too late, the job that should have been hers left to Kettil. Instead of finishing it right there and then she'd looked down at the dying woman, this Xu Tyynes who had loved her false self and who her false self had, apparently, loved back. Instead of using her power to end the woman's misery she'd used it to bring her to their home, and now watched as the

_She just wanted it over, I guess. When she realised her perfect world wasn't so perfect after all._

feel his muscles tense and his grip harden on the stonework as he thought of it. Instead of running back to their master the Dincht boy and the other one had instead dug in, and no amount of effort by his men had been able to uncover and extract them from the bolt-hole the two SeeDs had thrown themselves into. Nerva's reassurances had rang hollow even as he said them and he had been forced to admit that they weren't likely to be found. Aimsland could only reassure himself that he had already gotten everything he wanted out of the pair, their tame ice goddess now in his possession and already put to work. He had what he wanted

_At least this way maybe she'll find some peace. Compression unravelling around her and nowhere to call home._

teardrops contained some kind of soothing balm the beginning of winter had brought a measure of calm to the Galbadian city, calm that it had desperately needed. Those civilians and patrols that had driven along the boulevards had abandoned them as the cold had raced over the plains and descended onto the city, and the long roads had been given over to pedestrians. He could look down the street from the covered sidewalk and see two small children building a snowman in the middle of the street as amused Esthar checkpoint guards looked on, the lights on their armour casting a blue light that made the snow shimmer in the midday sun. He could hear laughter in the distance from the direction he had came; an impromptu ice-rink formed over a park's pond and hi-jacked by young adults looking for a good time. He wished he could

_She'll just…drift away._

was well known, but he doesn't know why the instructor reacts this way. Maybe some bad experience with one. He'd read the literature when he joined SeeD, fascinated along with half the planet about the things. Elemental beings born out of the dreams and personifications of mankind, allowing magic itself to course through their host's bodies and granting abilities beyond that of mere mortals. He had never spoken with one but sometimes, during the Second War when the Gang – hard not to think of them that way sometimes with the legend already firmly in the world's mind – had been recovering between sorties he would see them occasionally wondering the halls. Sometimes they would just…stop…and stare at the sky. Or a single word said into the air, as if listening responding to something only they could hear. They'd seemed larger than life back then, all six of them. The teenagers that walked like gods among them

_Tired of living…_

soon as she could. She didn't speak, just stared at Quistis with those dead gray eyes that gave away nothing and let nothing in. They had run into each other less than a handful of times since Quistis' had been locked up in the depths of the palace, the only times they met chance meetings in hallways. There was something otherworldly about the duchess' bodyguard, like a part of the slim killer was elsewhere, and only her physical body was present. Some women could turn an aura like that into an irresistible mystique or enticing aloofness. On the woman in front of her – _woman, Hyne she must be younger than me - _ it went the other way, like trying to have a conversation with a body already dead and embalmed. She felt herself backing away and chastised herself as she knew why. Where the lithe silent ghost went, her other half would be close. While Quistis had no love for Almas Jordin, she had no particular hate either. Whatever pain or event had made her into

_But scared of dying._

as if angry the pair had escaped and desperate to get inside and drag them back out. Xu shook of the stolen cloak and stood there in the dark corridor, alert for anything louder than a pinprick. She glanced across at Nida, who had done the same thing. Neither of them had brought anything bigger than a butterknife in with them. Xu had left most of her knives with Fujin, and Nida had a small pistol. Whether either would be useful if they were found inside a building

_There, I see it._

there, and that was why. Squall felt the bottom drop out of his stomach and almost stopped walking. He forced himself to go on, walking down the hill that the lone gravestone should have been at. He could think back, what seemed like years ago but had barely been a single one. The question Rinoa had asked him had been pushed away as the mad cult and this whole insane war had arisen from nothing. It had stayed in his heart though, dancing around in there and refusing to be ejected. Then one night in Galbadia they had visited a hospital chasing up a lead on that murder and it had pushed its way to the front again and shouted

_Come on, everyone._

white light hovering in the air directing the torrent at them. Irvine could see shadows flitting across his vision as the other SeeDs moved up into the city and with a stab of pride thought _that's my training_. Laguna had asked for a full assault but he had talked and cajoled and wheedled the man around to something quieter and a lot less bloody. Finally the Estharian president had just nodded and said; _whatever you think is best._ His best was with him now, and the small group had landed without hope, if not without bloodshed. Several-

_We're going home._


	45. Pure Shores

He could feel the sun beating down on his face, warm and prickly grass against his back. Squall opened his eyes and looked up into a perfect spring day. He could hear birds in his ears, and the roar of the ocean somewhere in the distance. he shifted his weight on the soft ground and gently lifted himself up, wincing all the way.

"Welcome back," a voice whispered softly in his ear as arms encircled him from behind. He leaned back into Rinoa's embrace and closed his eyes, just exalting in the feel of her behind him, the warmth emanating from his body as white wings encircled them both.

"Good to be here." He kissed her palm and stood, dragging her up with him. "My God, it's over." It was true, he could feel it in his bones. Flowers of every colour surrounded them, only faint wisps of smoke rising from the places they had…landed? Arrived would be a better word. He looked across the perfect morning and felt a smile cross his face. "I love you, Rinoa Heartilly. My angel."

"My knight," his wife replied, and they shared a kiss for the first time in what felt like months. They lost themselves in each other, an endless kiss that neither wanted to pull away from, until…

"_HEEEEEY!"_

He looked as Selphie came bounding almost out of nowhere. He laughed, taking one hand away from Rinoa and catching Selphie as she barrelled into him, almost bouncing back off in her speed. "You're both okay?" he asked as Irvine came up behind her, coat torn and stained with inky darkness but otherwise standing tall.

"It was insane," Irvine said, and that was enough. He laughed out loud. "God, it's so good to be back! Where are we, anyway? I thought it was the orphanage but-"

"You have no sense of geography, Kinneas."

Quistis walked up to them gently, Xu supporting her from the side. She still wore the clothes of the person that had been Imalia Aimsland, but the eyes were back, a warmth there at the sight of her family that drove the final doubts from Squall's mind, made him drop Rinoa for a second, walk over to his sister and hug her fiercely. "It's been too long," he whispered in her ear.

"I'm proud of you, Squall," she whispered, and drew back.

"Thank you Xu, so much," Squall said, settling for a handshake with the other woman who held Quistis to her side and had no intention of letting go.

The dark-haired woman nodded, although he could detect an ever-so-faint smile on her lips. "Commander. Long day."

"Long year, he replied. "I think we're owed some time off when this is behind us." Xu looked like she had something to say on those lines, but was interrupted before she could begin by…

"Who's that?" Selphie asked, peering into the distance. The field of blossoms waved in the breeze, revealing the figure standing atop the small hill in front of them. For a second he stood there staring down at them, before Zell waved his hand and Squall and Rinoa joined hands and went up to the man.

"Hell of a ride bro." Zell tipped his head down the other side and Squall saw him down there, sat kneeling in the grass, eyes staring into nothing. "What do we do with _this_?" Zell asked, voice dripping with distaste.

"Laguna will know what to do with him," Squall said, looking into Morden Aimsland's eyes. Nothing stared back out. Squall remembered seeing the man for the first time on a small video panel in Galbadia, proud and confident and utterly in control. Now all that was left was a shell. Seifer stood by him like a watchful guard dog, relaxed but ready to leap into action in a second if the man tried anything. Somehow Squall didn't think he would. Seifer looked around and their eyes met. For a second there was no movement between them, and finally Squall nodded, just a little bit. There would never be friendship between the two men, both of them knew it. But maybe now there could be a measure of respect. Something caught his eye and he turned away from the broken madman and his guards, looking over the hill. He laughed as he realised what Quistis had meant when she told Irvine his path-finding skills needed work.

"What's so funny?" Selphie asked in confusion as he and Rinoa stood on top of the hill. "I don't…oh." She smiled as she looked down onto the view and the others joined her.

Balamb laid spread out before them like a map, the green fields rolling out before them and the pristine white of the giant building rising up into the sky from a distance. From here it looked picturesque and Squall thought for a second of the imaginary Balamb Town they had left behind when Time Compression collapsed. He pushed it back out again. Everything he wanted was here. The rest they would make together.

"Do you remember?"

He looked across at Rinoa and saw her staring raptly at the building. "What?"

"I asked you that, when I wondered about your parents," she said.

He thought back and could see them both, standing above the swearing-in ceremony as they talked. A year ago, a year of death and conflict between then and now. "Yeah, you did." His thoughts went to Laguna. His father. Back in Esthar no doubt, _his_ home. He'd have to go visit sometime. No, not sometime. Tomorrow.

"And did you?" Rinoa asked softly.

He felt tears prick his eyes and he didn't know why. "Yeah. Yeah, I did. We…we have a lot of catching up to do." A whole lifetime's worth. He remembered Raine's eyes inside the bar. For all the misery that had been heaped on them in the last year, this memory at least he would treasure, of one moment with his mother and father, just talking.

Quistis spoke up. "I never saw mine. I thought maybe Imalia would have, inside that castle, but they just weren't there." She sighed wistfully. "I wonder what they were like."

"I met your grandmother," Irvine said.

Quistis looked over at the man in shock. "You- How did- What did…How was she?" she settled on eventually.

Irvine shook his head. "She was a hell of a woman." He paused. "She'd have been proud of you."

"Thank you Irvine."

Squall looked at his friends talking together on the hillside, the sun shining down from the heavens and the wind throwing the flower petals around them like a storm of colour. He grasped Rinoa's hand and looked down at Balamb Garden laid out like a painting. No more mad cults or crazed powers, no twisted shadows or sickly rainbow skies. Nothing now between them and it. Selphie and Irvine laughed and joked about what they were going to do when they reached Trabia again and good, honest winter. Zell was talking to anyone that would listen as Xu indulged the man's motor-mouth, Quistis just smiling, blonde hair blowing in the wind and just happy to be there, back with her family. There was nothing Squall wanted but this. Nothing in the world. He felt like laughing and crying all at the same time. "Let's go."

"Right by you," she whispered, grasping his hand. "Always right by you."

They walked forwards, and went home.

Beneath the sun.


	46. Epilogues

Squall Leonhart stayed at Balamb Garden after the war, going on take over as Headmaster after the resignation of the previous Headmistress and combined it with his position as Commander. Under his leadership he expanded the organisation away from paid mercenary work and further into diplomatic and construction contracts. He would later establish Esthar Garden with the help of the Republic's president. Decades later he would oversee the launch of the first manned interplanetary flights as a joint effort between SeeD and Esthar, acting as head of operations alongside his father, Laguna Loire. For the rest of his lifetime there was no recorded conflict between the nations of the world.

-xx-

Rinoa Heartilly withdrew from SeeD, never graduating from the program. She split her time between Dollet and Timber as the two states worked to reconstruct after the year-long Third Sorceress War, only stepping away from her duties temporarily to give birth to her children with Squall; Mira Leonhart and Cal Heartilly. A hero to the two nations, she would foster a trade and defence alliance between the two city-states that would eventually turn into an intercontinental alliance with the help of Galbadia. Although she never made total rapprochement with her father, Fury Caraway, she visited Deling City often where the man stayed under house arrest for much of his life. She would later obey his final request to be cremated, and kept the ashes herself.

-xx-

Selphie Tilmitt and Irvine Kinneas married not long after the closing of hostilities and the breakdown of the Second Time Compression. After the wedding at Balamb Garden they would return to Trabia where Selphie would remain as Headmistress of T-Garden for the next twenty years, with Irvine Kinneas as Head Instructor. With advice and guidance from Esthar to the south Trabia's population would expand tenfold, and a true capital for the nation was built in the warmer outskirts of the frozen north. During this time her husband re-opened relations with the non-human Shumi, and developed a more permanent relationship between the sheltered village and humanity, bringing much of their weather-control and botanic technology to the rest of the world. Their son Keiron Tilmitt would later be elected mayor of Eidel City, and continue his parent's work of turning the white country green.

-xx-

Quistis Trepe resigned her commission in SeeD two years after the end of the Third War, six months after her trial for the atrocities committed as a leader of the Unnamed Cult and the Burning of Timber. Although acquitted of all charges she found no peace within the mercenary organisation and after finalising plans she handed leadership of Balamb Garden over to Commander Squall Leonhart. She spent the next several months travelling, making one final trip to Esthar's historical archives before finally settling down in Fisherman's Horizon where she remained a private citizen, opening a library alongside her wife Xu Tyynes. She would only leave the ocean-locked city twice more in her lifetime, to attend the funerals of her biological brother Morden Aimsland and her orphanage-brother Seifer Almasy. Upon her death in 2092 the final strain of Blue Magic left the world and passed into history.

-xx-

Zell Dincht remained a core member of SeeD for all his life, travelling the globe as the organisation's primary trouble-shooter and representative. Acting as an example and role-model to the SeeD cadets that came after the Third War he would become legendary for his exploits across the world. Although he eventually had to cease direct combat due to injuries sustained in the Centran Deserts tracking down the last of the Unnamed Cult, he would never entirely shake off the enthusiasm that had been his trademark for all of his life. Zell Dincht vanished during his final mission at the age of sixty-five, investigating the Deep Sea Research Facility for signs of forbidden weapons-testing, alongside the GFs known as Cerberus and Leviathan. His death was never confirmed.

-xx-

Seifer Almasy returned to the SeeD program three years after the end of the Third War, after accepting a pardon for his Second War activities from President Loire of Esthar. Although starting once more as a cadet he rose swiftly and was a SeeD Rank A within five years. Alongside Zell Dincht and later Mira Leonhart he became one of the primary members of the Garden's now-smaller yet still elite military wing. Under his command two brushfire wars were averted, and a conspiracy to assassinate the Galbadian leadership was put down. His relationship with Squall Leonhart never fully thawed but the two worked together on several operations until Squall's retirement. He died in 2065 on the off-world colony Alexandria, defending the spaceport as the civilians were evacuated in the wake of the Fifth Lunar Cry. He was buried as a SeeD, with full honours.

-xx-

President Laguna Loire ruled Esthar until his death of old age in 2059. In the final years of his life he would oversee the disassembly of the great Esthar barrier judging it 'too goddamn tempting', the creation of trade-routes between the once-silent country and the rest of the world, and the opening of the permanent space-station Midgarand lunar bases Dalmasca and Alexandria. He was carried to his final rest by his friends and old comrades President Kiros Seagill and Ward Zabac, and by his son Squall Leonhart.

-xx-

Xu Tyynes left the organisation she had helped shepherd at the same time as Quistis Trepe, and the two eventually married in a private ceremony held in Esthar. Moving to Fisherman's Horizon with her wife, she had trouble adjusting to civilian life at first but was sought out to fill a space on the neutral city's governing council, which she would remain on for the next several decades and eventually lead. She established the absolute neutrality of Fisherman's Horizon as the world's diplomatic centrepiece, and allowed free access to the area to all nations on the condition that no weapons enter the city limits. She never allowed Balamb Garden to dock there again, a fact that brought her into conflict with Commander Leonhart often. She and Quistis lived in Fisherman's Horizon until their deaths, in a house that could see the ocean from the sky.

-xx-

Alec Nuo was ordained as ruler of his city-state in a ceremony shortly after the war ended, beginning the reconstruction with assistance from SeeD's construction division. He would oversee the expansion of Dollet inland and would be there three decades later as Duke when he, the Secretary-General of Galbadia and the Council of Timber signed the Declaration of Locks to become the Greater Western Union, finally ending the lifetimes-long rivalry between the three neighbouring states. His funeral was attended by SeeD commander Leonhart, his wife Rinoa, and their daughter Mira.

-xx-

Morden Aimsland was tried and convicted for crimes against humanity, and was imprisoned within Esthar for the rest of his natural life. Leftover cells of the Unnamed Cult tried several times to break him free from confinement they failed due to the work of Esthar's security forces and SeeD. Although held within the deepest layer of the prison-block, no sign of Blue Magic ever manifested again. Upon his death he was buried in southern Esthar in an area containing the ruins of an old city, upon the request of his only living relative Quistis Trepe.

-xx-

Jakob Kettil was never seen or heard from again. But there is a new forest in Centra.

-xx-

Almas Jordin did not emerge from Time Compression. It was thought by the only remaining expert on the subject that she allowed herself to dissipate across time, rather than return to the world that had created her.

-xx-

Sorcery continued on, in accordance with the rules set at the dawn of time itself. With the disappearance of the artificial Sorceress and the silence of the memories within Rinoa Heartily's mind the succession was clear again. The Power would pass down to Rinoa's daughter Mira upon her death, and from there to Mira's granddaughter Caela, from Caela Leonhart to Sara Harkens, to Annila Nines, to Janas Karsan, to her daughter and her daughter in turn, onwards through time. It would never be used in anger again until 3287 when Ilsa Renlos unleashed it during the Second Terra-Offworld War, resulting in the destruction of a considerable part of the Lunar surface and the area once called Centra, which sunk beneath the waves forever. It would pass down through the Leonhart bloodline for the next thousand years both in secret and overtly until finally coming to rest in the body of Rinoa Heartilly's descendant San Li'son, later known as the Empress of Stars, the Great Attractor and Power of All, and by the childhood nickname of Ultimecia. There it would begin its journey home.

To the start of it all.

Πάντα ῥεῖ

_The End_

* * *

><p>And here we are again, at the end of a whole lot of words that I hoped entertained a little bit.<p>

Thank you for reading. As always feedback is welcome, in any form.

Stay tuned for the next tale, sometime: Q+S

~Cobray_  
><em>


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